Magnus Carlsen and Gukesh Dommaraju’s battles on the chessboard have become one of the most talked-about clashes. The duo faced each other plenty of times in the recent past, including the famous Norway Chess 2025, where Carlsen won once, and lost another.
But what has been most interesting is the Norwegian’s habit of criticising the World Champion several times.
Another such instance occurred when Carlsen, while participating in the Esports World Cup chess tournament, was asked to stay quiet till he heard the name of a chess player who was better than him. Carlsen remained silent throughout the session and only broke his silence when Garry Kasparov’s name came up.
Later, as the video went viral on Instagram, Carlsen trolled Gukesh and wrote, “Would have stayed quiet for Gukesh as well.”
Interestingly, when the Indian GM humbled Carlsen in the SuperUnited Rapid and Blitz Croatia 2025, he had no qualms in admitting that he was ‘soundly punished’.
“I have kind of played poorly throughout the tournament and this time I got soundly punished,” Carlsen had told Take Take Take.
“But I think I had a very nice position. He took his chances to open up the position with c6 and after it was a bit like earlier, where I got short of time and I can’t really handle it that well and yeah, he found a lot of really good moves.
“Yeah, he did that part very well. I had one last chance at some point to bail out to something which was drawish and then I thought, well, let’s continue playing. A couple of moves later, I was hopelessly lost, it was poor.”
“All credit to Gukesh; he’s playing well and he’s taking his chances too. – He’s doing incredibly well now. It’s a long way to go in the tournament, but winning five games in a row is no mean feat.”