Two weeks after he beat world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen, 14-year-old Armenian chess player Tigran Hambardzumyan has described the game for the first time, walking through the win in an interview with Public Radio of Armenia.
Hambardzumyan did not know who he would be playing when he sat down. In the seventh round of the August 18 Titled Tuesday tournament, the pairings were set at random by computer, and Carlsen’s name appeared on his screen only once the matchup was made. With the former champion across the board, the teenager admits he tensed up immediately, having pictured Carlsen as unbeatable.
The game was already underway, with little time to settle. The clock gave each player five minutes with no increment. Hambardzumyan had the white pieces and steered the opening into a French Defense. In the fast exchanges that followed, he caught a slip from Carlsen and made it count.
“I noticed it skillfully and took advantage of it, and that is how I beat him,” he said. Five minutes after it started, one of the strongest players in the world had lost, and Hambardzumyan said it took him a moment to register that the result was real and in his favor.
The first person to hear was his grandmother, who was sitting beside him and grew emotional at the news. His parents were not home at the time. His coach, Grandmaster Tigran Harutyunyan, who has trained him for four years, said the phone call brought him great pride. “It is a huge honor when it is your own student who has beaten Magnus,” he said, adding that Hambardzumyan has real talent and much left to give. Harutyunyan hopes his student will one day beat Carlsen over the board rather than online.
The teenager’s rise is recent. He moved from Kyiv to Armenia in 2022, a relocation forced by the war, and has competed under the Armenian flag ever since. In 2025 he took silver in the Under-14 division at the European Youth Championship and won the European blitz title in his age group. He trains at the Chess Academy of Armenia.
Carlsen, still the world No. 1 by rating, remains the game’s dominant figure and the opponent every young player measures themselves against. Hambardzumyan said he would like to test himself against other giants as well, naming Garry Kasparov, though he noted that some, Kasparov included, no longer play online or competitively.
His next test comes in October at the Tsaghkadzor Open, where Harutyunyan says he will try to complete the final norm for the International Master title before pursuing the Grandmaster title, a path that will require pushing his rating higher.
