GM Arjun Erigaisi has joined GM Hikaru Nakamura in the Norway Chess 2025 lead after handing a second loss in a row to World Champion Gukesh Dommaraju. GM Fabiano Caruana bounced back with a fine win over GM Wei Yi, while GM Magnus Carlsen first spoiled a promising classical position against Nakamura and then lost a crazy armageddon where he couldn’t put the finishing touches to a winning attack before the U.S. star hit back.
GM Anna Muzychuk took the only classical win in round two of Women’s Norway Chess 2025 against GM Koneru Humpy to take a 1.5-point lead. After accurate draws, GMs Lei Tingjie and Ju Wenjun won their armageddon encounters against GMs Vaishali Rameshbabu and Sara Khadem respectively.
Round three starts Wednesday, May 28, at 11 a.m. ET / 17:00 CEST / 8:30 p.m. IST.
Norway Chess Round 2 Results
Once again, half of the classical games were decisive in round two, giving three points to Arjun, Caruana, and Anna Muzychuk.
Open: Gukesh’s Agony Continues
Women: Muzychuk Takes The Lead
Round 3 Pairings
Open: Gukesh’s Agony Continues
Arjun and Nakamura now lead Norway Chess, with 4.5 out of a possible six points.
Norway Chess Standings After Round 2
Arjun 3-0 Gukesh
Going into this game, Arjun had a stunning 5-0 record in classical wins against Gukesh, and he’s now made it six. Gukesh played an excellent game against Carlsen in the first round except for one fateful blunder, but in round two the storm clouds were gathering early above the world champion’s position. The problem was the clock, with Arjun coming to the confessional to express his surprise at his opponent thinking, since, “This is the same opening as the famous Magnus-Niemann game from 2022.”
“Infamous” is perhaps the word, since GM Hans Niemann’s win over Carlsen in the Sinquefield Cup led to the world number-one’s withdrawal from the event and a $100 million lawsuit.
This time, however, Arjun played the near novelty 8.a4 instead of Carlsen’s 8.Nf3.
There was nothing obviously wrong, chess-wise, with most of what Gukesh did next, but by move 17, which was the first time in the game Arjun stopped to think, he was almost an hour and 20 minutes up on the clock.
The game wasn’t getting any easier to play, either, with Arjun’s 20.g4!, planning Ng3, Nh5, and ultimately routing the white queen to the kingside, keeping chances alive for White.
Everything went Arjun’s way as he built up a winning attack, but Gukesh didn’t get to where he is without great fighting spirit and the ability to calculate his way out of danger. He resisted the onslaught, pounced on some inaccuracies by Arjun, and reached an endgame that, objectively, was drawn after 44…d4!.
That made it all the more painful, therefore, that Gukesh ultimately made the last mistake and went on to lose his second classical game in a row.
It was understandable that the word Arjun repeated in all his interviews after the game was “relieved.”
That’s our Game of the Day, which GM Rafael Leitao analyzes in detail below:
That game leaves Gukesh with no points on the table, while the other player to lose the classical game in the first round hit back right away.
Wei 0-3 Caruana
Caruana said he was trying to play “relatively fast” in round two after he’d got into time trouble and lost to Nakamura in round one. He explained his downfall there as follows: “At some point I made this mental decision to try to gain time, so I was playing each move with one second, and I also stopped thinking about the position, which is why I blundered.”
Against his Chinese opponent in round two he went for the Rossolimo Sicilian, but admitted to being essentially “out of book” by move five. A fascinating struggle ensued, with Caruana labelling Wei’s 23.Nf5?! “a really big blunder,” though only 25.Rxh5? was the point of no return. Here Caruana showed a fine knowledge of the rules of chess as he castled, and then found what he called “a very clean way to finish the game.”
The remaining match-up had also seemed as though it might end in classical chess, but instead would provide the day’s armageddon action.
Nakamura 1.5-1 Carlsen
Carlsen went into this clash with a remarkable 14-1 record in classical wins against Nakamura, but that was far from the whole story. With the black pieces, Carlsen had last beaten Nakamura in 2014, with seven draws since. Many feared a quick draw this time as well, but the opening promised more—and puzzled both players!
Nakamura said something similar, with the players recalling Nakamura-Caruana from the 2024 FIDE Candidates Tournament, but not sure if the position was identical. It almost was, after 12…Nxd5.
The only difference from the earlier game was the inclusion of h3 and Bc5-a7, while Nakamura noted in the confessional that he’d beaten Caruana but Carlsen is “a little bit stronger than Fabiano, so he’ll probably react a bit better!”
In fact it was more that Nakamura reacted badly here, going for 13.d4?!, which Carlsen labelled “a very significant inaccuracy,” allowing him to push 14…c5! and 15…b5! after exchanging on d4. “I may be over-optimistic, but I kind of feel like he has to look very seriously for equality here,” said the world number-one, and a few moves later everything seemed to be going his way, on the board and on the clock.
As often happens against Nakamura, however, the advantage fizzled out almost as quickly as it arose. A disappointed Carlsen explained:
I think he found if not the best, then at least a very cunning way to play it. He gave me a lot of options, but none of them were obviously good to me, and I spent a lot of time and ended up choosing a soft option that was aiming for a better endgame, but it wasn’t really better, and he found this nice little tactical trick which forced me to actually play accurately to save the game.
Nakamura described himself as “very proud” of how he sped up and extricated himself from the situation.
That meant armageddon, with Nakamura getting 10 minutes and the white pieces and needing to win, while Carlsen had Black, seven minutes, and could settle for a draw.
“We both just badly mismanaged our time, we ended up in this big mess,” is how Nakamura described what became a highly entertaining game. The time mismanagement was most obvious when Nakamura burned up almost three minutes on 21.Qb2!?, when he fell behind Carlsen on the clock. Soon an h-pawn lunge by Nakamura could have given Carlsen an almost instant win or draw, but his reaction, while correctly aggressive, led to total chaos, with three black pieces all hanging by move 28.
In fact Carlsen was winning after 28…Qc5+, which he played, but it cost a third of his time, and he later noted, “it doesn’t really matter very much if it’s winning or not!” Suddenly instead of Black checkmating on the kingside, Nakamura generated a powerful passed pawn and saw it to victory with some fine tactics of his own.
Carlsen had no complaints, saying, “In these scrambles he’s very, very good—I got outcalculated, and that was fair enough!”
In these scrambles he’s very, very good—I got outcalculated, and that was fair enough!
—Magnus Carlsen
Both players downplayed the significance of the extra half point, however, with Carlsen concluding, “It’s very early in the tournament, I’ve already got one classical win, so it’s not ideal, but it’s not the end of the world.”
Women: Muzychuk Takes The Lead
After scoring 1.5 points for winning in armageddon on the previous day, Muzychuk gained another three with the only classical win on Tuesday. Both of the armageddon games went in Black’s favor.
Norway Chess Women’s Standings After Round 2
Muzychuk 3-0 Humpy
So far, so good for Muzychuk with the strongest start after two rounds. On the white side of a Neo-Arkhangelsk Variation of the Ruy Lopez, she had slight pressure, eventually a winning position (41.Ra8! would have been lights out), but Humpy clawed her way back into an equal queen endgame. With both players on about a minute, however, the Indian grandmaster blundered with 56…Qxe4??, trading into a pawn-down endgame that can’t be held.
Thanks to her three-point win on the previous day, however, Humpy is still one of the two players chasing Muzychuk.
Vaishali 0.5-1 Lei
Vaishali-Lei was the day’s first classical game to end, a draw after 97 accuracy by both sides in a Petroff Defense.
Lei defended with another Petroff in the armageddon game. Though Vaishali went for the more ambitious attempt of 5.Nc3, Lei neutralized any possibility of a white advantage. And after 22.Bd2? a3! (White had to prevent this resource with 22.a3! herself) it was Black who had a decisive attack against the white king. Lei found a way to repeat moves, knowing that a draw was enough.
It’s a second armageddon loss in a row for Vaishali, and a second win for Lei.
Khadem 0.5-1 Ju
We saw another high-accuracy classical encounter where the commentary believed Ju had practical chances, with the black pieces, but it nevertheless ended with an unblemished draw.
In the armageddon, Khadem played a double fianchetto system with the white pieces, but it was Black who took over the center with an advantage. Ju may not have won with computer-like precision, but with Black she was never once worse. 24…b3! and 25…Ba3! were two strong moves to take over the initiative, and her final move of 43…Rxf2! was a stylish way to finish a nice game.
NM Anthony Levin contributed to this report.
Round 3 Pairings
Winners Caruana and Arjun face off in round three, while Gukesh will be attempting to avoid a brutal hat-trick when he takes on Nakamura. Women’s leader Muzychuk will be Black against second-placed Lei.
How to watch?
You can watch Norway Chess 2025 on the Chess24 YouTube and Twitch channels. It will also be streamed on Nakamura’s Kick channel. The games can also be followed from our events page: Open | Women.
Norway Chess 2025 features Open and Women’s six-player tournaments for equal prize funds of 1,690,000 NOK (~$167,000). It runs May 26 to June 6 in Stavanger, with players facing their opponents twice at classical chess (120 minutes/40 moves, with a 10-second increment from move 41). The winner of a classical game gets three points, the loser, zero; after a draw, the players get one point and fight for another half-point in armageddon (10 minutes for White, seven for Black, who has draw odds).
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