The Week in Chess

1. Niemann-Sarin Blitz Match 2025 - Games and Results

   Hans Niemann plays a match against Nihal Sarin over two days 8th to 9th June 2025. Day 1 was an 18 game match of straight blitz which Niemann won 10.5-7.5. Day two will be Chess960 blitz. The match is on Endgame.AI a new site with some technical problems. In the blitz they fixed the kingside castling problem they had in their last match but the one castle queenside was given as castle kingside. They also had some PGN headers, not useful ones such as player names and results, but some. Tomorrow will be a real test with both the start position really being required in their nascent PGN, plus, the special castling rules. If it works great I'll publish the games, otherwise, not.

2. Carlsen wins Norway Chess for the seventh time - 10

   Magnus Carlsen won the Norway Chess tournament for the seventh time in thirteen outings. Carlsen set up the result with a round 9 grind against Fabiano Caruana. Carlsen was a pawn up but whilst the engine said that initially Caruana should hold, in practice it was beyond him. In the final round Carlsen was put under pressure by Arjun Erigaisi, bailed out with a Queen sacrifice, looked in trouble, turned it around to be winning before finally settling for a draw in time trouble. That result guaranteed Carlsen at least a tie-break for first place and after Gukesh lost it won him the tournament. When all the other games had finished Erigaisi beat him in their Armageddon tie-break.

   Going into the final round Gukesh was just behind Carlsen and had black against Fabiano Caruana. Gukesh was gradually outplayed and dead lost for a long time, then towards the end he pulled back to equality, only to blunder for a final time, costing him a chance at first.

   Gukesh scored 4.5/5 with white but only 0.5/5 with black, a strange disparity. He also had far too many bad postions, although his ability to play them is impressive. I don't doubt there's still a lot of improvement to come.

   Second place went to Fabiano Caruana after his win over Gukesh. Caruana's play is still a bit patchy but he's a derserved world number 4 and definitely is entitled to think he can win a candidates and a world champonship.

3. 13th Norway Chess 2025 -

   The 13th Norway Chess tournament took place Mon 26th May to Fri 6th Jun 2025 in Stavanger, Norway. There were two elite tournaments, the regular tournament and a women's event, both are 6 players and 10 rounds. Norway chess has a unique twist in that if games are drawn there is an additional Armageddon game. So the points are: Win in the classical game: 3 points, Loss in the classical game: 0 points, Draw in the classical game & win Armageddon: 1½ points, Draw in the classical game & loss Armageddon: 1 point.

   Players: Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, D Gukesh, Arjun Erigaisi, Fabiano Caruana and Wei Yi.

   Women's event: Ju Wenjun, Lei Tingjie, Humpy Koneru, Anna Muzychuk,Rameshbabu Vaishali and Sarasadat Khademalsharieh.

   In the end Magnus Carlsen won the tournament, he drew a very difficult game for both players against Arjun Erigaisi. In second place was Fabiano Caruana who defeated Gukesh in a sharp struggle. In the women's event Anna Muzychuk took first place.

4. 6th Stepan Avagyan Memorial 2025 - Games and Results

   The 6th Stepan Avagyan Memorial took place Thu 29th May to Fri 6th Jun 2025 in Jermuk, Armenia. The event has gradually grown in strength, starting at Category 10, then 15, then 16 twice, now 17 this year and last. Players: R Praggnanandhaa, Aravindh Chithambaram V, Samuel Sevian, Nodirbek Yakubboev, Benjamin Gledura, Buhl Bjerre Jonas, Robert Hovhannisyan, Dmitrij Kollars, Xu Xiangyu and Hakobyan Aram.

   Aravindh Chithambaram won the tournament on tie-break from Praggnanandhaa, both scored 6.5/9 and both won in the final round. Aravindh won about $8000 and moves to 9 in the world. This is his third tournament win in a row after the Chennai GMs. and Prague Masters (great stats from ChessBase India). Praggnanandhaa scores some Grand Prix points in his quest for qualification for the next Candidates tournament via the FIDE circuit 2025 (Caruana took the place for 2024).

5. Titled Tuesday Blitz 3rd June 2025 - Games and Results

   The Titled Tuesday Blitz 3rd June saw Levon Aronian win the early event ahead of Sergei Zhigalko and Denis Lazavik. Aronian beat Alireza Firouzja in Round 6 Lazavik in round 7, drew with Nepomniachtchi in Round 8, Wesley So in Round 9 beat Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son in Round 10 and drew with Zhigalko in the final round. Firouzja won the late alone on 9.5/11 half a point clear of a big group of 6 on 9 points. Firouzja beat Sanan Sjugirov, Daniel Naroditsky and Hans Moke Niemann in the final rounds.

6. Hans Moke Niemann vs Anish Giri Rematch 2025 - Games and Results

   Hans Moke Niemann played an 18 game blitz match against Anish Giri starting 4pm BST on 4th June. Just one day of blitz games and played online using the website Endgame.AI. Niemann seemed to have the match wrapped up but Giri mounted a comeback and won the final four games to run out a 9.5-8.5 winner. In the final game Giri was down to the increment for many, many moves and Niemann was almost 90 seconds up at one stage and even had 60 seconds at the end when he walked into mate when Giri had only 10. "Sorry guys, I choked" was Niemann's reaction.

7. Caruana leads in Norway after 8 rounds ahead of his game with Carlsen - 8

   Fabiano Caruana leads the Norway Chess tournament with 12.5 points out of a possible 24 half a point clear of Magnus Carlsen who has 12 points, this after 8 rounds, they meet in Round 9 on Thursday.

   By this point the tournament has almost completely been derailed by Magnus Carlsen's troubled tournament. Ever since Carlsen lost from a winning position against Gukesh he's been completely off. He clearly doesn't want to be there.

   In Round 7 Carlsen forced a quick draw against Nakamura and won the subsequent tie-break, then in round 8 he drew in the classical game and then just dropped a piece against Wei Yi. It seems highly likely he'll announce a retirement from classical chess following this, a long break might be in everyone's interests, most of all Carlsen's, but I really hope and expect such a retirement not to be permanent. I looked up how many published games Carlsen has played since the start of 2024, it's just over 1000, almost all blitz. That's just a few more games than Fischer and a few less than Capablanca had published over their entire careers. Most of these games might fairly be described as meaningless. I'm not sure this isn't the real heart of his problem. Also there has been a lot of discussion recently about the general population's ability to concentrate for extended periods of time in the face of targeted distraction from many sources. I know that's a problem for me.

   The second important story of the event is that of the World Champion, Gukesh, he won another important game in Round 7 beating Arjun Erigaisi for the first time but then he lost quite badly to Hikaru Nakamura. Fabiano Caruana leads in spite of blowing a winning position against Arjun Erigaisi in Round 8. Caruana had beaten Wei Yi in Round 7.

   The women's event is also all over the place Humpy Koneru is back in the lead a point clear of Anna Muzychuk and Ju Wenjun, but honestly anything can happen in the final two rounds.

   Rest Day 4th June.

   Round 9 Thursday 5th June: Nakamura vs Erigaisi, Gukesh vs Wei Yi, Carlsen vs Caruana.

   Women's: Vaishali vs Khademalsharieh, Ju Wenjun vs Anna Muzychuk Lei Tingjie vs Humpy Koneru.

8. TCh-POL Ekstraliga 2025 - Games and Results

   The Polish Ekstraliga takes place 2nd to 10th June 2025. Leading players: Pentala Harikrishna, Frederik Svane, Matthias Bluebaum, David Navara, Daniel Dardha, Nils Grandelius, Rasmus Svane, Andrei Volokitin, Maxime Lagarde, Ferenc Berkes, Marc Andria Maurizzi etc