D Gukesh beats world no. 1 chess player Magnus Carlsen in a classical match

D Gukesh, the 19-year-old Indian grandmaster, defeated 34-year-old World Number 1 Magnus Carlsen from a losing position on Sunday at the Norway Chess 2025. Magnus had beaten Gukesh in the first round and went on to celebrate, declaring himself the king of chess on a social media post. "The King", was eventually beaten in that very match by Gukesh.

Norway Chess 2025 marks Gukesh's first classical win

This is Gukesh’s first classical win over Magnus and it came after a thrilling endgame in which the Indian took advantage of a mistake from his opponent and made a sensational comeback. The secret to Gukesh’s win, however, was his incredible calculative powers, which helped him find the right moves even when, for a long time, he looked like the weaker player, and even lost the first round.

Gukesh had the white pieces this time and he started with 1.e4, however, Magnus began with a Berlin after having trouble with a classical Ruy Lopez against Fabiano Caruana. He later played 7…a6 and looked in good control of the match with a 98.7 accuracy at one stage, but Gukesh kept fighting and finding the accurate moves to push the game deeper before Carlsen blundered with 44…f6.

This allowed Gukesh to get into ascendancy as both players were scrambling for time in the end, running on the 10-second increment. This is when the next and the biggest mistake from Magnus (52…Ne2+??) appeared as he was left stunned by Gukesh’s counterattack.

Soon after, Magnus resigned and slammed the table in anger as a visibly shaking Gukesh turned emotional, almost unable to believe what he had pulled off.

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“I don’t know what happened,” Gukesh said after beating Magnus. “…99 out of 100 times I would lose. It was “just a lucky day.

“I mean, [it was] not the way I wanted it to be, but okay, I’ll take it.”

What the leaderboard shows

Magnus continues to be the lead at Norway Chess, but he has been forced to share it with Caruana for now, on 9.5 points, while Gukesh is second on 8.5.

Meanwhile, in other matches, Caruana defeated Hikaru Nakamura in Armageddon, while Arjun Erigaisi had a similar win over Wei Yi. In the women’s section, India’s Koneru Humpy is in joint lead with 9.5 points after Armageddon defeat to R Vaishali. Anna Muzychuk also has 9.5 points at present.