OSLO: There's one original Norway Chess innovation that the rest of the sporting world ought to copy. Its confessional booth. Just imagine if sportspersons were given the choice to freely go inside a soundproof room and air their thoughts about anything and everything to the watching world during matches. No journalists. No prompts. Just them, a mic and camera and their unfiltered thoughts. While introverts would avoid stepping into a room like that, a lot of players have, over the years, gone viral for their ability to turn the booth into pure theatre.
In fact, on Tuesday, Magnus Carlsen, one of the players who loves using the confessional, coined a new term to evaluate his own performance against Vincent Keymer. "I think like a cow that's ashamed of its body," the Norwegian said while the game was on. "This game is just an udder embarrassment. I feel like every move we are making is some kind of positional mistake."
The World No. 1 — while intensely self deprecating — was correct in his own assessment. He missed a checkmate, took the draw before coming back to win the Armageddon.
Indian players, and there have been a fair few of those at Norway Chess over the last few years, are generally shy. Shier still when it comes to visiting the confessional. In 2025, when R Vaishali was part of the field, she had to be coaxed by the organisers to visit the confessional. This year, D Gukesh, R Praggnanandhaa and Koneru Humpy have stayed away from the place.
But Divya Deshmukh, who's probably one of the more extroverted chess players in India today, has broken the Indian stereotype. She has visited the confessional on both days and found it a 'breath of fresh air'. "It's a breath of fresh air because you have to be quiet for so many hours," was her reasoning for immediately getting acquainted with the small room inside the playing hall. "You can just go there and talk, you can let out your thoughts. It helps me because when I go there, I can talk and it helps me calculate better." She in fact called the organisers 'progressive' for coming up with a place like this. "I'm talking about the moves and I'm also calculating at the same time."
And she gets the intention and the idea behind the need for a confessional booth. It's a broadcast friendly place as it gives people a peek into the mind of an elite chess player when they are not on the board. When she was facing the world champion Ju Wenjun, the Nagpur-born World Cup winner had some sympathy for some of the people sleeping on the first row. "I saw that there are some people sleeping while sitting in the first row," she cheekily remarked. "I don't blame them. It's what I would have done too."
The comment that went viral, though, involved a dried mango. "I am actually getting a bit hungry," she said. "There's a packet of dried mango but I'm unsure if we can eat it. It might be kept there for promotional causes." Post her game on Tuesday, she was actually given an unopened packet of dried mangoes from an Indian scribe after her interactions in the mixed zone.
It helps that the 20-year-old is off to a strong start in the tournament, winning two Armageddon games following as many draws in the Classical version. Both matches saw her beating more experienced players. If she beat Wenjun in the first stanza, she followed that up with a win over compatriot Humpy on Tuesday.
For the time being, she's in second place with three points. In a field stacked with the world champion and some of the world's most seasoned players, the youngest player to ever feature in the women's tournament is holding her own.
Round 2 (Tuesday's results): Open: Alireza Firouzja bt R Praggnanandhaa, Magnus Carlsen bt VIncent Keymer 9Armageddon), Wesley So bt D Gukesh (Armageddon). Women: Bibisara Assaubayeva bt Zhu Jiner (Armageddon), Anna Muzychuk bt Ju Wenjun (Armageddon), Divya Deshmukh bt Koneru Humpy (Armageddon)
