Norway Chess Underway

Carlsen and Gukesh headline; plus, a concurrent women's event.

Round 1 is underway at the Norway Chess tournament. It’s a small event - a six-player double-round robin, but it’s a “tasty” event all the same. The field is extremely strong: Magnus Carlsen (world #1), Hikaru Nakamura (#2), Arjun Erigaisi (#3), Fabiano Caruana (#4), Gukesh Dommaraju (#5 and oh, by the way, the World Champion), and bringing up the caboose there’s Wei Yi (#9).

Also fun: if the classical game (game/120’, + a 10” increment from move 41 on) ends in a draw the players do it again with the same colors for an Armageddon game (meaning Black “wins” in case of a draw): White gets 10 minutes, Black 7 minutes, with both sides getting a 1 second increment from move 41 on. If White wins the classical game he gets 3 points and the loser no points; if it goes to Armageddon the winner gets 1½ points, the loser 1 point.

The pairings for round 1, going on now, are Carlsen-Gukesh (which is looking very exciting right now, and objectively good for Gukesh), Caruana-Nakamura (not looking interesting at all), and Erigaisi-Wei Yi (looks drawish).

There’s also a concurrent women’s event that’s not quite as strong (by the standards of the women’s rating list) as the main event, but it’s close. Ignoring the long inactive Hou Yifan as the women’s nominal #1 player, we have long-time champion and de facto women’s #1 Ju Wenjun against #2 player Lei Tingjie (Lei has White), Humpy Koneru (#5) vs. Vaishali Rameshbabu (#13), and Anna Muzychuk (#6) vs. relative outsider Sarasadat Khademalsharieh (#23).