Gukesh beats Carlsen for first time in classical chess; furious World No. 1 bangs on table

World Champion D Gukesh defeated World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen in a classical game for the first time in round six of Norway Chess in Stavanger on Sunday.

At the end of the game, Carlsen was distraught and banged on the table, letting the wooden pieces bear the brunt of his frustration. He then offered a reluctant and cold handshake to Gukesh and made a half-hearted attempt to atone for his antics by rearranging the pieces he had left strewn across, like a boy's toys.

The Norwegian grabbed his fallen King to put it back in the Centre. Ironically, it stumbled and fell, perhaps reiterating the old proverb about pride and failure.

Carlsen's theatrics, while unprofessional, weren't unwarranted. The player, who almost always moves with machine-like precision, made an uncharacteristic blunder in the endgame to lose the battle he was just a few paces off from winning.

"99 out of 100 times, I would lose this game, but ... lucky day," Gukesh told the commentators afterwards. Gukesh was lucky, much like last December when Ding Liren of China blundered in the decisive game of their World Chess Championship match.

There were a few similarities with that eventful game 14 in Singapore; the most tangible part was a rook on the 'f2' square. Capturing that had turned the game on its head against Ding. Tonight, Gukesh had his rook on 'f2' precisely when Carlsen made a blunderous knight move, utterly destabilising his position and turning a win into an inevitable loss. Gukesh played all the right moves after going a piece up after the fortuitous moment and forced Carlsen to resign on the 62nd move.

The other common trait from the World Championship game was Gukesh's resilience. The young Indian had been thoroughly outplayed for the most part, so much so that Carlsen began taunting him in the endgame, hoping Gukesh would just resign. "At some point, I was going to resign," Gukesh said afterwards.

But he didn't and played on. By move 30, Carlsen's black King had been so bored sitting untroubled in a corner that it stepped up a square as if peering over the castle to see all the carnage at the other end. By 40 move, Carlsen's King felt like taking a closer look at the battlefront, so it moved up, criss-crossing the board -- f6, e6, d5, d4 and d3 -- reaching just three steps further from Gukesh's cornered King.

If this game had not ended the way it did, Carlsen's King march would have been labelled epic. A week ago, Gukesh had wasted a glorious opportunity in the endgame of his opening round to lose against Carlsen. That was Gukesh's best chance to upset Carlsen in a classical game. The Norwegian was so pumped up, having survived the scare and eventually winning, that he let his peculiar presumptuousness get lyrical on Twitter (now X). "You come at the King, you best not miss," Carlsen shared.

Well, Gukesh didn't go after the King this time; he drew him closer and let the Shehanshah, blinded by his might, stumble and fall over the sword of destiny. "First classical win against Magnus, not the way I expected, but I will take it," Gukesh said.