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Magnus Carlsen takes on Hikaru Nakamura in a blindfold chess game during an exhibition event at International Casinos & Entertainment Expo event in Barcelona. (Photo: ICE via FIDE)
Magnus Carlsen revealed that he was “seriously considering” playing at the Tata Steel classical tournament in Wijk aan Zee this year. Carlsen plays in one—or maximum two—classical events each calendar year, with his home event of Norway Chess a mainstay of his classical chess ambitions these days. In 2022, Carlsen had walked away from the classical World Champion’s throne after winning the most prestigious event in the sport five times.
Carlsen’s participation at this year’s Norway Chess tournament has already been confirmed. There was also some surprise when it was revealed that Carlsen will play in the TePe Sigeman chess tournament in Sweden’s Malmo. Later this year, there will be the Chess Olympiad where last time around, Carlsen had played on board 1 for Norway. But this time, the Norwegian Chess Federation have made it mandatory for any player wanting to be part of the team to play a minimum of 18 classical chess games between June 2025 to April 2026.
“I was seriously considering playing at the Tata Steel Chess event this year. Not because it’s the Wimbledon of Chess or anything like that. But I think it’s good to give myself challenges once in a while to do something that I don’t really want to do. To some extent, I don’t really want to spend three weeks playing a classical tournament, but I think it’s kind of good for me to kind of force myself to take on that challenge,” Carlsen said at a press conference during the ICE (International Casinos & Entertainment Expo) event in Barcelona just before he played a blindfold exhibition game against world no 2 Hikaru Nakamura.
Carlsen then explained why he had eventually decided not to play in Tata Steel.
“For me, the reason why I didn’t go was that I thought I’d keep the decision open after my son was born. But after that (his son being born), after a couple of weeks of being really tired, I thought, well, I’m not going to spend three weeks playing classical tournaments if I can have a break.”
Carlsen and Nakamura were in Spain to play in a one-off exhibition game during which ended in a draw, but not before both players had wowed the audiences with their memorisation skills.
A press release from FIDE noted: “Playing for fun in Barcelona, Carlsen was expected by many to play the Catalan Opening but the world’s No.1 instead began with 1.Nf3. Nakamura responded with the solid Agincourt Defence for the 15-minute game. The Norwegian tried to confuse his opponent with a double fianchetto setup maneuvering his knights aggressively and eventually winning a central pawn. But Nakamura had ‘seen’ far ahead and, at the right moment, sacrificed a bishop to force a perpetual check.”
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At the pre-match press conference, moderated by international master and the world’s most popular streamer Levy Rozman (known popularly as Gotham Chess), Rozman had started off by apologising and mentioning that they did not want to occupy Greenland — a dig at US president Donald Trump who has taken a fancy to the Danish territory in recent months.
“Hikaru and I will be apologising to everybody on behalf of the United States. We are not in talks to take Greenland,” joked Rozman with American grandmaster Nakamura and Carlsen smiling on either side of him.
English (US) ·