 "Magnus Carlsen is not ready to surrender in front of the new crop of highly impressive NextGen players. image: Norway Chess")
Magnus Carlsen scripted a comeback win on Thursday as he defeated Indian Grandmaster Arjun Erigaisi in round four of the ongoing Norway Chess 2025 in Stavanger. This was Carlsen’s first win after suffering two back-to-back losses in Armageddon after opening the tournament with a statement win over world champion D Gukesh.
The world No.1 Carlsen had admitted on Wednesday that he lacked energy as he went down to Wei Yi a day after losing to Nakamura, but did not face any such challenges against 21-year-old Arjun, beating him in 48 moves and capturing a sole lead in the open section.
Despite two Armageddon defeats, Carlsen sits at the top of the standings with eight points while Caruana and Nakamura currently are second and third with 7 and 5.5 points. India’s Gukesh and Arjun are level (4.5) on points in the fourth position.
Interestingly, Carlsen has defeated both NextGen chess stars so far in Norway Chess 2025. The group of teenage and early-20s chess stars — including Gukesh, Arjun Erigaisi, R Praggnanandhaa, Alireza Firouzja, Vincent Keymer, and Nodirbek Abdusattorov — are often seen as the future of the sport. And 34-year-old Magnus Carlsen has found himself in constant battle with these rising prodigies.
Carlsen targets wins against all NextGen chess stars
After beating Arjun, Carlsen announced that he is relishing the challenge and wants to beat all of the NextGen stars.
“It’s a little bit random that I happen to have beaten Gukesh and Arjun so far, seeing that I’ve really had pressure against everybody, but still, I’m kind of trying to beat them all. I think you could see certainly inexperience in his defence today, which worked out in my favour,” he told Take Take Take.
Analysing his win over Arjun, Carlsen said that his strategy was to create pressure on the young Indian chess player.
“There were a lot of forced moves. I felt that it went from - he had many moves to keep balance to a point, only one. That’s probably all you can ask for. I felt like I did more or less everything correctly in order to put pressure on him and often people crack, and he did today,” Carlsen explained.