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The world No 1, Magnus Carlsen, making a rare return to classical chess this week at the annual TePe Sigeman tournament in Malmö, Sweden, squeezed through to a blitz playoff in Thursday’s final round after Turkey’s 14-year-old talent Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus blundered fatally in the late stages after reaching a drawn position.
Carlsen tied on 5/7 with India’s Arjun Erigaisi and won the blitz playoff 2-1. This was the final sudden death game.
Earlier, Carlsen was defeated in Monday’s fourth round in a fluctuating marathon 88-move game by the Netherlands GM Jorden van Foreest, whose predatory rook finally trapped a Carlsen knight which had wandered too far from base. It was a grind of a type which Carlsen himself has won many times in his career.
This was Carlsen’s first classical loss since his defeat against India’s reigning world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju, at Norway 2025, when he famously banged the table in frustration.
Carlsen previously played in Malmö as a 13-year-old in 2004. His return in 2026 was sparked by a desire to get into shape before Norway Chess at Oslo, which starts in two weeks and which he has won for six of the past seven years.
Carlsen was taking a risk, for seven rounds was a sprint where dangers lurked. He played conservatively against his two top-12 opponents in the first three rounds, but chose the aggressive King’s Indian, Benoni and Najdorf Sicilian with Black against the lower rated players.
His reasoning was that, with a fast classical time limit, there would be a period of 20 moves or so before the move 40 clock control where the game would effectively be rapid chess, a genre at which Carlsen is supreme.
Carlsen called his win with the Benoni “a fun game” as the Swede Nils Grandelius went strategically wrong with 13 f4? after which his pawn centre became static while the world No 1 mobilised his queen’s wing by 17…b5! There was a thematic end to the game as the black a pawn marched right down the board to a2 and White resigned in the face of imminent queening.
Final Malmö scores were Carlsen and Erigaisi 5, Nodirbek Abdusattorov (Uzbekistan) and Erdogmus 4, Van Foreest 3.5. Andy Woodward (US) 3, Zhu Jiner (China) 2, Grandelius 1.5.
Wood Green win British league with 100% score
The Four Nations Chess League (4NCL) is Britain’s premier team chess competition. Launched in 1993, the year of Nigel Short’s world title challenge to Garry Kasparov, it has been dominated by two powerful squads: Guildford, who won 10 times before retiring, and Wood Green, whose victory in the just ended season was their eighth. The north Londoners won every one of their 11 matches, a feat they previously achieved in 2011-12.
Wood Green outclassed the opposition, with their superiority based on high scores by GMs Jonathan Speelman (9/11), Matthew Turner (8.5/10), Matthew Wadsworth (8/11), Shreyas Royal (7/9) and IM Marcus Harvey (8/11). Speelman is now 69, but the former world title semi-finalist continues to defy the years with his imaginative attacks. Turner, Scotland’s highest rated player, who currently works for chess.com, previously taught chess at Millfield and was runner-up in Countdown.
Harvey’s win against the rare defence 1 d4 d5 2 c4 Nc6 3 Nf3 Bg4 was entertaining and convincing. Just to make sure, Wood Green also brought in the nine-time reigning British champion Michael Adams for the final weekend. He won twice and drew with fellow elite GM Gawain Maroroa Jones.
Wood Green’s consistent success is down to its main sponsor, Brian Smith, a retired financial trader who keeps a low profile but who has backed winning Wood Green squads in the 4NCL and the London Chess League. In recent years he has been supported by Bjørn Tiller, a former Norwegian champion who used to play for Wood Green teams, and by Loz Cooper, an international master and former English Chess Federation junior director who manages Wood Green Youth, which finished a strong third in the just concluded season.
CSC/Kingston were second, a fine result for a young team with an average age in the early 20s, and a tribute to their manager, Kate Cooke, who is also responsible for the club’s two teams in lower divisions. Cooke is aided by a well-known Guardian journalist who prefers to remain anonymous.
Two players, Sergey Korshunov of Fide/Russia and Lorenzo Fava of Italy, scored IM norms, but there could have been a third from England. Supratit Banerjee already had 4.5/6 at the start of the final weekend, and the Kingston 12-year-old looked nailed on for his second IM norm and a further step to breaking Shreyas Royal’s IM age record.
However, an invitation came for him to join a Kasparov Chess Foundation training camp for elite juniors in Munich that weekend and Banerjee chose the camp. It proved a wise decision, as he still has around 18 months to break the record, while at Munich he qualified for a further training camp in Croatia at which Kasparov himself will be present. The Sutton Grammar pupil requires another two 2450+ performances plus a published 2400 rating for the IM age record.
Most of the 12 Division 1 teams are semi-professional, with a few GMs and IMs being paid. The 4NCL used to be stronger still, but Germany’s Bundesliga now has more resources for attracting elite grandmasters.
The Division Two champions, who secured automatic promotion, were She Plays to Win Lionesses, who fielded international players from the Netherlands and France, as well as 11-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan, who is currently England’s highest ranked female player with a rating of 2374.
The 4NCL, whose long-standing chair, Mike Truran, has also doubled as ECF President, takes place over five weekends at central Midlands venues, and currently includes nearly 80 teams in several divisions. New entrants are welcome.
4023: 1 Re8+ Bf8 2 Ne4 Rdxc2 (other moves also lose) 3 Nf6+! gxf6 4 Rg1+ Kh8 5 Rxf8 mate.
