Magnus Carlsen, the world number one, made a rare return to classical chess at the annual TePe Sigeman tournament in Malmö, Sweden, this week. He 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 of a drawn position. Carlsen tied on 5/7 with India's Arjun Erigaisi and won the blitz playoff 2-1, with the final game decided by sudden death.
Earlier in the tournament, Carlsen suffered a defeat in Monday's fourth round against Dutch GM Jorden van Foreest in a fluctuating 88-move marathon. Van Foreest's predatory rook eventually trapped a Carlsen knight that had wandered too far from its base, marking a grind of the type Carlsen himself has won many times. This was Carlsen's first classical loss since his defeat against India's reigning world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju, at Norway Chess 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 motivated by a desire to get into shape before Norway Chess in Oslo, which starts in two weeks and which he has won for six of the past seven years. Carlsen took a risk by playing in the seven-round sprint, where dangers lurked. He played conservatively against his top-12 opponents in the first three rounds but chose aggressive openings like the King's Indian, Benoni, and Najdorf Sicilian with Black against lower-rated players. His reasoning was that with a fast classical time limit, there would be a period of about 20 moves before the move 40 clock control, effectively turning the game into rapid chess, a genre at which Carlsen excels.
Carlsen described his win with the Benoni as "a fun game" after Swedish GM Nils Grandelius went strategically wrong with 13 f4?, leaving his pawn centre static while Carlsen mobilised his queen's wing with 17...b5!. The game ended thematically as the black a-pawn marched down the board to a2, and White resigned in the face of imminent queening.
The final scores in Malmö were: Carlsen and Erigaisi 5, Nodirbek Abdusattorov (Uzbekistan) and Erdogmus 4, Van Foreest 3.5, Andy Woodward (US) 3, Zhu Jiner (China) 2, and Grandelius 1.5.
Wood Green Win British League with Perfect Score
The Four Nations Chess League (4NCL), Britain's premier team chess competition, saw Wood Green claim victory with a perfect 11 wins out of 11 matches, a feat they previously achieved in 2011-12. The north Londoners outclassed the opposition, with high scores from 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, now 69, continues to defy his age with imaginative attacks, while Turner, Scotland's highest-rated player, works for chess.com and previously taught at Millfield.
Wood Green also brought in nine-time reigning British champion Michael Adams for the final weekend. He won twice and drew with fellow elite GM Gawain Maroroa Jones. The team's consistent success is attributed to main sponsor Brian Smith, a retired financial trader, supported by former Norwegian champion Bjørn Tiller and IM Loz Cooper, who manages Wood Green Youth.
CSC/Kingston finished second, a fine result for a young team with an average age in the early 20s, managed by Kate Cooke. Two players, Sergey Korshunov and Lorenzo Fava, scored IM norms, but England's Supratit Banerjee missed a chance for his second IM norm when he chose to attend a Kasparov Chess Foundation training camp in Munich instead of playing the final weekend. The 12-year-old still has about 18 months to break Shreyas Royal's IM age record.
The Division Two champions, She Plays to Win Lionesses, secured automatic promotion with a team featuring international players and 11-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan, England's highest-ranked female player. The 4NCL, chaired by Mike Truran, takes place over five weekends and includes nearly 80 teams in several divisions.
