Carlsen scores in Malmo, while Niemann wins $50,000 in Warsaw

World No 1 Magnus Carlsen, making a rare return to classical chess last week at the TePe Sigeman tournament in Malmo, Sweden, squeezed through to a winning blitz play-off in Thursday's final round after Turkey's 14-year-old talent, Yağız Kaan Erdoğmuş, faltered from a drawn position. Carlsen thus tied with Arjun Erigaisi for first with 5/7, leading to a speed tiebreak which the Norwegian, the reigning world blitz champion, won 2-1 as his knight check on the final move of the third game won the Indian's queen. Three days later, Hans Niemann, the controversial US grandmaster whose game with Carlsen at the 2022 Sinquefield Cup, portrayed in the Netflix documentary Untold: Chess Mates, is now being made into a Hollywood film, scored the most important success of his career. Niemann, competing as a wildcard, won the $50,000 first prize at the Warsaw Rapid and Blitz in Poland ahead of the US champion and world No 3 Fabiano Caruana, India's reigning world champion Gukesh Dommaraju, and the Candidates winner Javokhir Sindarov. The 22-year-old world No 12 scored 22.5/36, finishing half a point ahead of Caruana, with Wesley So on 21 in third on an all-American podium. Niemann's best game featured an imaginative rook-for-knight sacrifice at move 27 against Jan-Krzysztof Duda, which led to the Polish No 1's resignation eight moves later. Niemann is not a regular Grand Chess Tour player, so will be absent from the next event, the Super Chess Classic at Bucharest, starting on Wednesday, where the only wild card will be a Romanian. The question now is whether he will receive a wild card for the 2026 Sinquefield Cup, which takes place at the end of August. Three years ago Niemann damaged his hotel room after a defeat in the US Championship, and was banned by the St Louis Club, but he competed in the 2024 and 2025 US title contests at the club without incident, and is now the obvious wild card choice. Warsaw was the first time that Niemann had been invited to a Grand Chess Tour event since the 2022 Sinquefield Cup. He called it "a great honour and privilege" to win the tournament and mentioned that he was shocked to receive the invitation, which he said he accepted in five minutes. Perhaps the final decision about the 2026 Sinquefield Cup will be made by the St Louis benefactor Rex Sinquefield, who is an FT reader and who can be relied on for a wise selection. Niemann is also a strong candidate for the US Olympiad team which will compete at Samarkand in September, where they will be expected to contend for the gold medals against India, China, and their Uzbekistan hosts. For Niemann personally, the immediate target is a place in the world top 10, from which he is only 12 points away on the live ratings. Malmo was a continuation of another good year for Carlsen, who shows no sign of slowing down at age 35 and who currently holds world titles in rapid, blitz and freestyle as well as being No 1 in classical chess. Erdoğmuş, who has recently broken into the world top 30, could have shared first with a draw and stayed level right until the endgame, where Carlsen only had a small space advantage until a mishap at move 50 enabled the Norwegian's king to break through. Carlsen recovered from an earlier loss to Jorden van Foreest where the Netherlands GM's predatory rook trapped a Carlsen knight which had wandered too far from base. It was a long grind of a type which Carlsen himself has won many times in his career, and it was Carlsen's first classical loss since his defeat against India's reigning world champion Gukesh Dommaraju at Norway 2025, when he famously banged the table in frustration. Meanwhile, Argentina's prodigy Faustino Oro qualified on Sunday for the grandmaster title in the Sardinian Open at the age of 12 years six months. Oro's achievement came under more stringent regulations than the USA's Abhimanyu Mishra, who became a GM in 2021 at 12 years four months. Puzzle 2675 Vincent Keymer v Georg Meier, Grenke Freestyle Open, Karlsruhe 2026. White to move and win. Click here for solution Solution, back page Chess solution 2675 1 Bg5+! Nxg5 2 hxg5+ Kxg5 3 Qd8+! Kh6 4 Qh8+ Kg5 5 Qh4 mate.