79 ms·

Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

872 points by CawCawCaw 4y ago

modernerd 4y ago
Good for him, and a great lesson for chess fans: Play the kind of chess that makes you happy, be it globetrotting super-GM invite-only tournaments or 500 games of back-to-back bullet on Lichess.
- willhinsa 4y ago
  ...or play 250 hyperbullet games until 5:45 am during the Candidates tournament when you have a game at 3 PM the next day. https://www.chessdom.com/firouzja-prepares-for-nepo-with-the-250-games-hyper-bullet-match-vs-naroditsky/ https://www.chessdom.com/firouzja-prepares-for-nepo-with-the...
  - jpeter 4y ago
    Did the preparation pay off?
    - __s 4y ago
      No
matsemann 4y ago
Time to change the format. It's understandable you don't want to spend your whole career preparing for these long matches all the time. For the challenger it's 6 months of preparing, but for Carlsen it would've been his 6th time of preparing for this in a few years. They have also become less entertaining. 12 matches is long (edit, 14 now), but no one dares to take any risks. Caruana was just defensive and all games ended in a draw. Karjakin they both at least won each their game, but still had to go to rapid tie-breaks. And against Nepo it was a steamroll, understandably meeting him again isn't that exciting. It's also almost impossible for a new person to get a chance. Even Carlsen didn't like the format and didn't participate in the Candidates for a few years, and when he first did he almost didn't win it to be allowed to play the WC match. Even though he clearly was the best player at the time. I wonder how this will affect the status of the title, when it's in practice is now a title-fight between the second best players. Also what will happen to the hype in Norway? Each WC match has so far been live streamed on all big news pages, biggest TV channels etc. It will still be a Christmas tradition to watch the rapid WC tournament I guess, but I'm afraid this will lead to less coverage. But just to tell how big Carlsen is in Norway: This is the top news on all outlets at the moment.
- taude 4y ago
  I know next to nothing about competitive chess, other than watching the Magnus documentary about a younger Magnus. What kinds of things are chess players doing to prepare for a match for 6 Months? Is there something they're memorizing, studying video (what would they be looking fro)? I'd have always just thought they were good to play at any time. This sounds super stressful.
  - sgjohnson 4y ago
    > Is there something they're memorizing Yes. Their upcoming opponent's past games (including analyzing them for strengths and weaknesses), and engine lines mostly.
  - matsemann 4y ago
    In a normal tournament, you meet so many different people (and you often don't know in advance exactly who you will meet of all the participants), so it's hard to specifically prepare. For a match of this kind, however, you know your opponent will prepare specifically against you. So you kinda have to do the same. That entails analyzing all of their games and finding defenses and weaknesses. But also trying to find new novelties in the openings etc. And since the opponent will do the same, you yourself have to prepare defenses for lots of potential new openings 16 moves deep or so. It's an insane amount of studying. Of course, that pays off for future games outside the match as well. But when you know your challenger will spend half a year on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to beat you, you probably have to do the same. So have to say no to everything else.
    - kamaal 4y ago
      Say a player just rote memorised moves from a chess engine and just played it. Would that be considered cheating?
      - moomin 4y ago
        It isn’t, partly because you needed to predict the scenario would come up and partly because your opponent can do the exact same thing.
ginko 4y ago
From the outside the champion system in chess seems so weird. I know they do something similar in boxing, but there it sort of makes sense because attending too many boxing tournaments isn't exactly healthy.
- masklinn 4y ago
  > I know they do something similar in boxing, but there it sort of makes sense because attending too many boxing tournaments isn't exactly healthy. Also a boxing match is a maximum of 12 rounds over 47 minutes (since 1982), not 12 games over 3 weeks.
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- pmontra 4y ago
  Many national go tournaments have a similar format in all of the 3 countries it's worth talking about (China, South Korea and Japan): the champion waits for the result of the challenger tournaments and plays only the final series of games (3, 5, 7.) International tournaments tend to be shootouts with everybody playing from the first round. You can get a picture of how they are set up by looking at the tournament tables at https://www.go4go.net/go/tournaments/news https://www.go4go.net/go/tournaments/news
  - NhanH 4y ago
    Japan is the only country still have major tournaments with champion vs challenger format. None of the big tournament in China or South Korea has that type of game.
    - pmontra 4y ago
      I see. For example the Korean Kuksu had the champion/challenger format until 2008. Then it was discontinued in 2016 but that's another story. But China's Tianyuan is still champion/challenger (from 2022): https://www.go4go.net/go/tournaments/news/16 https://www.go4go.net/go/tournaments/news/16 I didn't check the others.
raptorraver 4y ago
I understand his decision but still I'm disappointed.
zmgsabst 4y ago
Hikaru kicking himself about that last game, now.
- ourmandave 4y ago
  I wonder if Magnus wasn't inspired by Hikaru's zero-f's given attitude, where he's just playing for fun or the challenge, instead of titles.
- dlandis 4y ago
  My thoughts exactly. One game away from playing for the world championship. Would have been awesome to see, and I think he would have had a very solid chance against Ian.
pdevr 4y ago
He has every right to decide so. It is his prerogative. Nonetheless, this will, for sure, be disappointing for many chess fans.
- skilled 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure 99% of Carlsen's fans expected him to do this since he has talked about it for a long time now. And as the article points out, he's still going to remain _very_ active in the Chess community, tournaments in particular.
  - pdevr 4y ago
    Expected by many. Still, disappointing for many, including me :)
smitty1e 4y ago
Props to MC for going out literally at the top of his game. As Kipling noted: "Once in a while / We can finish in style".
- jstx1 4y ago
  He's not going out though - he'll keep playing chess and he stated that he wants to remain the best chess player. He's just not playing the World Championship match.
  - eimrine 4y ago
    Magnus' streams in blitz chess are way more interesting than official plays IMO.
  - smitty1e 4y ago
    Yes, finishing his World Championship affiliation.
- prionassembly 4y ago
  Oh, that's fancier than my ready-at-hand qute for these situations, which was 90s-girl-rocker Ani DiFranco: "so I'll walk the plank / and I'll jump with a smile / if I'm gonna go down / I'm gonna do it with style".
jmyeet 4y ago
Obviously this raised the issue of Bobby Fischer. The article mentions this but doesn't really go into the details. Fischer beat Spassky in Rejkyavik in 1972 for the World Championship. This took almost 3 months (July to September) and there was controversy, disagreement and negotiation about where and how it would take place. This had the backdrop of being a Cold War proxy too of course. Interestingly, Fischer didn't play competitive Chess after this. He was set to defend the title against the eventual challenger, Anatoly Karpov, in 1975. Fischer too didn't like the tendency for draws and proposed a format of first to 10 wins (with Fischer retaining the title in case of a 9-9). This was rejected and Fischer ultimately abdicated and never played competitive Chess again. He also became a semi-nomadic recluse too. But it also wasn't Fischer's first hiatus from the game. There was the 1972-1975 gap but also anotehr in the 1960s. He clearly seemed like a troubled guy. I've always found it fascinating the level of commitment required to play Chess at this level. I certainly have never had any interest in that (nor the ability, to be clear). No one really seems to know how to solve this without going to a more blitz like format. Chess at the highest level seems to revolve around memorizing a whole book of openings and defenses while being able to take advantage of mistakes but also finding novel approaches in standard openings and defenses but now it seems you have to go fairly deep into a game before you go off-book.
- rawoke083600 4y ago
  >Bobby Fischer For anyone that likes the weird, wacko and genius (all the same thing ?) there are few excellent short documentaries on YouTube about Bobby Fischer. Well worth a watch!
- jstx1 4y ago
  More like Kasparov because he remained active after the FIDE split. Still a bit different because Magnus isn't running a parallel WC of his own. It's also funny how the only 3 World Champions who have refused to defend a title because of disagreements with FIDE are probably the 3 best chess players ever.
  - AmericanChopper 4y ago
    Fischer is clearly the goat in my view. But it’s not so obvious to me that Kasparov and Carlsen are better than say Vishy or Morphy or Botvinnik or Capablanca…
rawoke083600 4y ago
Honest question: Would somebody at this "level" be better than good at something like StarCraft ? Noted that SC takes more than "just strategy" i.e micro comes to mind. Like I would pay good money to see Serral Vs Magnus, maybe after some coaching sessions with Harstem ? :D ? EDIT: Just out of curiosity will there be anything else that someone at this level is "exceptional" good at besides chess ?
- haunter 4y ago
  He held the number 1 spot in the Fantasy Premier League for a time so yes https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/dec/16/chess-champion-magnus-carlsen-top-of-world-fantasy-football-rankings-premier-league https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/dec/16/chess-champion...
  - rawoke083600 4y ago
    Oh interesting ! I didn't know that !
- matharmin 4y ago
  There is not that much overlap between skills required for chess and StarCraft. Being good at one may perhaps correlate with having some natural talent in the other, but experience in the specific game would matter a lot more.
- inkblotuniverse 4y ago
  I'd love to see that.
- __s 4y ago
  Magnus has been doing alright in poker, tho the volatility makes it harder to accurately measure what his level is there Pitting him against a pro StarCraft player would be a joke tho. For reference, Nina is able to reach 4800 MMR worker rushing every game. The mechanics alone would take a couple years of dedicated practice
- rollcat 4y ago
  "Good" as in, maybe reach GM? Quite likely, although being in GM already makes you a statistical outlier (200 slots per region in a player base of hundreds of thousands). Good enough to challenge a pro? You're seriously underestimating how much hard work the pros are putting in to play at their level - on top of the insane mechanical skill, game knowledge, and experience. Part of the skillset is obviously transferrable to other RTS games (big chunk of the AoE4 ladder was dominated by SC2 GMs early after launch), but playing (and staying) at pro level in SC2 requires much more - it requires consistency. Serral has 7.5K MMR not because he's been taking 20 MMR off a 7.4K player (because there are no 7.4K players), he has 7.5K MMR because he took 1 MMR from 6K players a couple thousand times. 6K is like what, top 50 GM? My bet in Serral v Magnus would be X:0 in a best of (X*2)+1, for any X the players would be willing to suffer through. (Sorry if my numbers are a bit inexact, the new season just started and GM is not open yet.)
deleted 4y ago
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epups 4y ago
Hopefully now he can dedicate more time to reaching 2900, a much more interesting accomplishment than winning 1, 2 or even 5 more world championships in their current format.
- deleted 4y ago
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- Epa095 4y ago
  Given that you get more points the higher ranked opponents you beat, the best way to get to 2900 might be to coach other players so they get higher scores, before beating them.
peter_retief 4y ago
Chess at this level is hard work, by resigning now he "sort of" stays world champion
sam_lowry_ 4y ago
Funny that they mention Arkady Dvorkovich, I would expect him to quietly retreat from managing current affairs in FIDE because of his high position in Russian civil service. How can one of the closest allies of Putin head an international organisation nowadays?
- dmurray 4y ago
  In March he condemned the invasion of Ukraine and stepped down from his other positions (which have not included working for the Russian state since 2018). You can always say he should go further, that he's tainted by his past links to Putin, or point out that if he had really turned on Putin he would have found polonium in his tea by now, but it's misleading to describe him today as "one of the closest allies of Putin".
  - sam_lowry_ 4y ago
    Isn't he still the Chairman of the Board of Russian Railways, a state-owned company?
    - dmurray 4y ago
      According to their website, he left that board in 2020. https://ar2020.rzd.ru/en/corporate-governance/board-directors https://ar2020.rzd.ru/en/corporate-governance/board-director...
      - sam_lowry_ 4y ago
        So, he worked for the Russian state until 2020, then? Or until March 2022, when he resigned as head of Skolkovo? As you can see, he was sticking around until the war actually started. Did he precipitate the war by lending his name and skills to Putin? IMO, definitely yes. Should he resign from FIDE? Russians do not resign, they cling to positions of power indefinitely. Should FIDE fire him? Definitely yes, its rules are made for respectable gentlemen.
- divan 4y ago
ShivShankaran 4y ago
Russia is playing China in the world championship. I wonder if US is getting a serious heartburn
- dmurray 4y ago
  Four of the world top ten currently [0] represent the US, versus one from each of six other countries. They're the favourites for the upcoming Olympiad. Elite level chess in the US is just doing fine. [0] add your own asterisks for how important it is, but all four moved from abroad, three when they were already world class players
  - jstx1 4y ago
    It's 3 - Caruana, Aronian and So - https://ratings.fide.com/ https://ratings.fide.com/ Also, Caruana was born in Miami to Italian parents and lived in the US and played for the US until he was 12.
    - dmurray 4y ago
      And Nakamura, who is joint 9th on that list although it displays as #11. (he's outright 8th on the 2700chess live list, which I used originally but is less authoritative).
  - ShivShankaran 4y ago
    At some point Americans have to realize that this unwarranted hostility towards China, Russia and India will bite them back. It's already biting the lower and middle class back and this is most likely the beginning of the end of American empire led by a senile demented dude. Love always trumps hate but the arms industry of US will keep pushing for arms inside and outside of US at all times even if the people being murdered are it's own kids.
ourmandave 4y ago
I feel like this puts a cloud over Ding vs Nepo. Like whoever wins, the title will have an an asterisk that says, "Only because Magnus bowed out."
- bionsystem 4y ago
  Ding had a really tough year last year, grinding his seat for the candidates with his country in lockdown. If he wins it's going to be well deserved in my opinion. Nepo really crushed it in the candidates, and frankly had a couple of good games against Magnus last time before he collapsed. If he wins I feel that there is some good merit as well. Obviously a lot of it is subjective. Mainly, I think the champion would have to beat Magnus in some future games or matches in other tournaments before truly gaining everybody's respect.
ycombinete 4y ago
Perhaps Magnus is going to pull a Kasparov and start his own competing World Championship.
mikaeluman 4y ago
The candidates might as well be the world championship. But they need to make sure wins give you e.g. 3 points and draws only 0.5. Even in the candidates this year Ian - having obtained a nice lead - played drawing lines with white to perfection. I don't blame him, it was the right decision. The incentive structure needs to change. Even after a draw, the concept of Armageddon games to give another half point would be interesting and useful.
- __s 4y ago
  How do you disincentivize win trading?
  - mikaeluman 4y ago
    How do you mean one can trade when someone has lose? Do you mean that all russians agree to lose to their number 1?
    - Buttons840 4y ago
      He means I let you win with white, and you let me win with white, and we both end up ahead by doing so.
- jstx1 4y ago
  That's why as a spectator I wouldn't like a change in the format to a multi-player tournament. Changing it would be equivalent to making the candidates the World Championship and removing the WC match - basically getting rid of the most exciting part of following chess and keeping everything else the same.
- tzs 4y ago
  > But they need to make sure wins give you e.g. 3 points and draws only 0.5. As black under such a system I might be more strongly incentivized to go for the draw than under the current system. I'm already starting at a disadvantage by having black, so pressing for the win is extra risky, and if I do go for it and lose my opponent gains 3 points on me. If you want to reduce draws by playing with points you probably should included something that takes into accounts white's advantage. You want to make sure white has a strong incentive to push for the win, which in turn also increases the chances white will go too far, giving black a good chance to also push for the win. For example, asymmetric scoring such as black gets 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, and white gets 2 points for a win, 0 points for a draw. That system was tried in a couple or so tournaments around 2005 or so. As far as the format goes, I wonder if a small tournament coupled with something like the promotion/relegation system used in many soccer leagues would be good? Have a Champions Tournament that consists of 4 players that play a double round robin (or maybe a quadruple round robin?) for the World Championship. The participants are the current Champion, the runner-up from the prior Champions Tournament, and the top two from the Candidates Tournament. The Candidates Tournament would include the 3rd and 4th place players from the prior Champions Tournament, the 3rd and 4th place players from the prior Candidates Tournament, and some players who are invited based on rating, World Cup, and Grand Prix results. Maybe also make the Candidates bigger than it is now, say 10 or 12 players. That would be too long to hold as a single event, so split it. Play some of the games as part of the World Cup event and some as part of the Grand Prix events.
Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
Abdicating the chess championship title by Carlsen without a match is actually a dick move towards his eventual (and inevitable!) successor, who would never be seen by a lot of chess fans as the 'true' chess champion of the Steinitz-Lasker-etc lineage - much like how to this day many people argue that Karpov would have never been able to defeat Fischer and thus isn't a true champion. (I personally think that Karpov would have beaten Fischer, and that's the biggest reason why Bobby ghosted on everyone.)
fairity 4y ago
My read on the situation is that Magnus had two goals: 1) remain world champion 2) get to 2900 elo #1 got in the way of #2 because all the elite grandmasters constantly focus throughout the year on preparing for Magnus, which creates a headwind in the non-world champion tournaments where he must perform well to reach 2900. My guess is he will focus on 2900. Then, come back as world champion. Then, retire after 7 championships or his performance deteriorates.
- epolanski 4y ago
  Isn't elo eventually inflated by the number of ranked players anyway? The more people will be eventually fide rated and climb through the distribution the more the better players will drift at higher elos. That's also a reason why in modern days we have more 2750+ ranked players than ever. One common, wrong, argument is that modern players play better, while this is true this does not affect the elo ranking at all. The elo system merely tracks how did you do against opponents with a different ranking and assigns a score based on the win or loss, how well the players did is absolutely irrelevant to the distrubition.
  - matsemann 4y ago
    I think that the rating inflation debate has concluded that there isn't that much inflation. Compared to the old 2600 generation, the 2700 people now are just that much better. An analysis here: https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-elo-ratings-inflation-or-deflation https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-elo-ratings-inflation-or-d... It claims that a 2500 player now is better than a 2500 player in 2000. So in that sense it's actually been a deflation. Also https://www.playmagnus.com/en/news/post/rating-inflation-myth https://www.playmagnus.com/en/news/post/rating-inflation-myt...
    - epolanski 4y ago
      But that's my point: elo distribution has nothing to do with how good players are, it merely tracks your win/lose status against opponents with a different elo. If you take, e.g. two unranked players that are very bad at chess or two unranked masters they are still going to end up with a +16 and -16 elo change. And you can keep adding great or bad players to the pool, and elo is still going to only look at the outcome not how players play. The point with elo is that if there's only 2 players it is basically impossible to reach a 2000 elo, because even if one consistently wins at some point he's not gaining any point by beating the same opponent, thus to go from 1700 to 1800 he'll need to face an opponent that has a similar elo. The more people slightly below his skill the more he'll rise in the elo distribution, this trickles down all the way up and down. Of course it is very likely that modern 2500 players are better as they have better tools than players of 20 years ago, but the same applies to people lower and higher in rating. Thus, at the end of the day, the only factor that matters in an elo distribution and how wide it is, is the number of games and players. If tomorrow there will be an influx of another million ranked players the distribution will get a bit wider and this would also inflate in the long run ratings of the highest rated players.
SeanLuke 4y ago
It might be worth mentioning a famous abdication which caused a lot of consternation, albeit in another game. I love this story but may have gotten some details wrong. Marion Tinsley was world checkers champion from 1955-1958, then took a break, then again from 1975-1991, when he resigned in protest (at age 64). He was utterly dominant; indeed it is hard to think of a competitor in all of history more dominant over his sport or game than Tinsley. In 1990 Tinsley decided to play Chinook, the best checkers computer program in the world. Chinook had placed second at the US Nationals so it had the right to enter the world championships, but the US and British checkers federations refused to allow it. So Tinsley resigned his title. Tinsley then played Chinook in an unofficial match (which he won). This power play really stuck it to the federations: nobody wanted to be named the new world champion knowing Tinsley was fully capable of crushing them. Eventually everyone came to an agreement to let Tinsley be the "champion emeritus". Tinsley played Chinook four years later, at age 68, still probably the best player in the world. But in the middle of the match he complained of stomach pains and withdrew after only six games (of 20), all drawn. Tinsley's pains were real: he later died of pancreatic cancer.
- deleted 4y ago
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- arbitrage 4y ago
  Fantastic write-up. Thank you so much.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  Chinook was obviously playing the long con. Knowing Tinsley's weakness was his humanity, so it continued to draw until his frail human body succumbed to the forces of nature, thus winning once and for all.
  - Cthulhu_ 4y ago
    Skynet doesn't have to do anything, it just needs to be patient. ...and self-replicating so it ensures its own survival long term of course, but that's a problem yet to be solved.
theduder99 4y ago
FWIW Hikaru pointed out that some of Magnus's complaints are kinda moot because Fide created the world rapid/blitz championships. If you prefer shorter games, go win that one. If you enjoy classic, then do the classic tournament.
- jpgvm 4y ago
  To be fair he does "go win that one".
xiaodai 4y ago
meh. this will never happen in shogi or weiqi world. chess is a mess. the issue with top level chess is that draws are the most common result. it doesn't matter for mere mortals like us but it does get boring to follow top level chess vs go and shogi. xiangqi's got the same issue
- baby 4y ago
  Go/weiqi really is much more entertaining than chess, but chess has won the west. I think the US has the same issue with football being quite boring to watch compared to soccer/rugby, but marketing has prevented the other sports to proliferate.
- tweakimp 4y ago
  Time for a chess rules change?
mark_l_watson 4y ago
I totally support Magnus Carlson’s decision. He really loves travel and playing in many tournaments and now he can do more of what he loves. I enjoy watching him, and others, do Chess streaming and I went to the US Chess Open in 1978 but I never even played 25 rated games so my rating was never official. I do like do slowly read through Chess games, especially old historic games. I do the same with the game of Go: I like the several hundred year old Shogun Palace games. I did take online lessons from a Korean Go master a few years ago, and once a month play a long game against CSPro Go program, let it spend an hour after the game analyzing my moves, then I look at what moves I should have played in critical parts of the game. I guess what I am saying here is that different people enjoy games differently, and I respect Magnus optimizing playing Chess for his own fun and lifestyle.
Lapsa 4y ago
he's just fucking with Naka :D
V-2 4y ago
While he's (this goes without saying) perfectly within his rights to do so. I feel this decision will undermine his status as one of the GOATs of the game in the long run. "However, one cannot say that he has beaten Caruana or Karjakin convincingly. [Both matches were decided on tiebreaks]. There were questions in his match against Anand too. If he had beaten all three of them as clearly as he won against Nepomniachtchi, I would understand Carlsen. But is he already tired of winning after winning one match clearly?" (Karpov)
- why-el 4y ago
  "Did Michael Jordan win all six championships convincingly? All series went 5 games or more."
  - V-2 4y ago
    While Karpov's opinion is debatable of course (although the man knows a thing or two about the subject), I frankly can't see how this analogy is applicable here? If anything, Carlsen's WC matches fell definitely on the short side (which is one of the reasons why 2 of them were only decided on rapid tiebreaks, which is kind of ridiculous in and of itself; not saying it's Carlsen's "fault", but still). And all but the last one - where Nepo self-destructed anyway - were 12 games long. Back in the dya of Kasparov vs. Karpov a WC match was at least 24 games long - so for example Carlsen's both wins against Anand in 2013 and then 2014 combined were only as long as a single match before his era. And the (in)famous aborted match of 1984-85 lasted for 48 games. The struggle used to be much greater. How does the analogy with Jordan fit here exactly?
    - why-el 4y ago
      Both Jordan and Carlsen won championships. Many of Jordan's games were very tight, down to the last second. I can find another player who won more handsomely, that does not negate Jordan's achievements. That's the analogy.
      - V-2 4y ago
jari_mustonen 4y ago
Some ideas for rule changes that would make a draw less probable: 1. Make it so that repeating a position is not a legal move 2. Remove castling as a legal move Or, if the rules of the game stay the same, change the tournament format radically: 3. Force specific openings like they do in the computer chess tournaments. Both players play as white and black. Select positions that are far from equal.
soneca 4y ago
Can someone please explain to me (someone complete out of the world of chess) why he doesn’t like to compete in the World Championship but likes to compete in other tournaments?
- kriops 4y ago
  WC requires copious amounts of high-intensity prep, close to a year from what he has said before, so this is a ROI thing for Carlsen. He has spent half-ish (emphasis on the ish) of his adult life preparing specifically for WC matches.
  - tgarv 4y ago
    Why does the WC take so much more prep than other tournaments? Is it because of the format, or just the pressure to win?
    - aaronblohowiak 4y ago
      Between candidates (the tournament) and the event (the championship between current champ and challenger) there is a large gap so the top two can have time to study each other. Other tourneys you aren’t putting in so much prep about all your possible opponents because there are too many of them.
    - fernandopj 4y ago
      In terms of preparing against your opponent, at their level and with enough time to think over the board, one has to know so much theory about many lines, that as white you're forced to find "novelties", which are brand new or mostly never played lines that might never come up in the game, in the hopes of throwing your opponent of their preparation. With black, you have to prepare a few opening lines and know them so well as to avoid surprises and maximize chances of at least a draw. This takes a lot of time and energy and memorization becames a huge factor. When you face many opponents, the ROI of deep studying a few lines doesn't pay off against people who have a myriad of styles, so memorization plays a lesser role; and you play many tournaments so having a few bad ones isn't such a big deal, comparing to playing for WC.
ComputerCat 4y ago
Wow, what an impressive run though!
t_mann 4y ago
In the short run at least, this might hurt FIDE more than Magnus. He's already the biggest brand in global chess by far, at this point becoming successful at the 'influencer game' (his podcasts, other content like the poker and fantasy football he got into as well, collaborating with other influencers like the - also Norwegian - highly successful former climber Magnus Midtbo,...) might do more for his brand than winning yet another title. That's assuming that's even his goal, he really just seems to be doing whatever he enjoys. And in the long run, FIDE will also be fine. There will be new talents, and as even Magnus admitted, it's hard to rival the 'official' world champion title in terms of global attention.
- retzkek 4y ago
  What might save FIDE, or at least keep it relevant, is if Ding being in the championship now can do for chess in China what Fischer did for chess in the US, or Anand for India. There's a potential huge market and player base that so far hasn't been very interested in international Chess (xiangqi and go are more popular). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_in_China On the other hand, this may be an inflection point toward online chess and faster time formats taking over for deciding who the "real" chess champion is. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, especially with the battle between chess.com and lichess.org for online mindshare.
SheetPost 4y ago
Weird flex: drop out of WC to promote scam artists: > I feel, the FTX Crypto Cup, which is going to be awesome
upupandup 4y ago
I guess when a particular game has been figured out thanks to AI, we will hear more and more professionals and world champions throwing the towel. Yes there will be a market for watching human vs human games but can we still call them the best of the best when some AI program can play it not only better but teach us more axioms and undiscovered patterns or rules? Good on him to call it quits, shouldn't impact his standing in the world any less.
SubiculumCode 4y ago
Face it FIDE, chess.com is where the chess world is at these days, and when in a mood, Lichess.
kriro 4y ago
He'll still play chess and wants to go to 2900 but I'm curious if he'll take a serious step at poker eventually. He's playing for fun already (played in the 2022 WSOP if I recall correctly) and he'd probably be very good at GTO studying.
bluecalm 4y ago
My view on this is that the current World Championship cycle achieves the opposite of what it should achieve: 1)There are many tournaments where the best player is not allowed to participate making them tournaments of second bests for no reason other than determining who plays in the Candidates 2)Other tournaments, even those with long tradition, are poisoned by the Candidates because many top players treat them as training ground for the Candidates (hiding preparation or not playing very seriously) or skip them altogether because the Candidates is more important 3) Candidates tournament itself is hyped as the most important event but it by design excludes the strongest player. If you told someone outside of chess about it they would rightly think only a complete moron could have come up with such system 4)Some tournaments with a lot of potential to be fun and competitive (Grand Swiss, The World Cup) cause a lot of controversy because some dinosaurs in the chess world think the strongest player shouldn't be allowed to play. Fortunately saner minds prevailed for now. What you end up with is a calendar full of events for the second best players which influence all other tournaments in negative way. Additionally tournaments with a lot of potential (Rapid World Championship for example) are treated as an afterthought by FIDE. 3 day very random event even though rapid chess if widely more popular than classical among casual chess fans. FIDE does everything to prevent fans from having fun following the game. Imagine half the tennis calendar excluding current number 1 player from participating. It's so ridiculous and obvious watching from the sidelines. Unfortunately a lot of chess insiders literally don't care about the game popularity and think the money they earn grow on trees (or come from the ground as the only serious sponsors FIDE could attract are oligarchs and they oil/gas companies). I am so happy Magnus is not interested in participating in this shit show any further. His reasons might be personal but it's a great chance more fun formats and tournaments take place and we can all have way more interesting game to follow.
- triyambakam 4y ago
  So if you win the WC once, you then only perpetually play the WC games and not all the games leading up to it? Yeah, that's really strange and seems to favor the incumbent
- Roper333 4y ago
gautamnarula 4y ago
As a Magnus fan this saddens me, but his reasons are understandable: you've got one life to live and he doesn't enjoy spending a quarter of it preparing for these grinding, stressful matches. After five consecutive wins, including a crushing win less than a year ago, and 10 years as world #1, by a considerable margin for most of those years (the gap between him and #2 right now is the same as between #2 and #9, and this is the smallest gap it's been in some time), I think he can make a credible case that he has nothing left to prove and trying to get a 2900 rating is more interesting. On a related note, my suggestion for an updated WCC format: We should move away from all classical chess. Yes, that's the tradition that's been going for 150 years, but today so many of the biggest events are rapid and blitz (online tour events, Grand Chess Tour Rapid & Blitz events, World Rapid & Blitz Championships, not to mention two of the last three world championship matches being decided in rapid tiebreaks and many of the biggest classical events decided in rapid or blitz tiebreaks). So I believe the "World Chess Champion" should be the person who demonstrates mastery in a blended format of all three, to represent the importance of all three. The rapid, blitz, and classical portions all have equal weights (18 points)by following in the footsteps of the Grand Chess Tour Rapid and Blitz events where rapid games are worth 2 times as much as blitz. I suggest 6 classical games, worth 3 points each (1.5 for a draw); 9 rapid games, worth 2 points each (1 for a draw); and 18 blitz games, worth the traditional 1 point each (0.5 for a draw), with the cumulative score determining the winner.
fzliu 4y ago
Although a lot of folks are undoubtedly disappointed, props to Magnus for understanding that there are other great accomplishments to be had besides continuously winning the WCC. I think the format of the championship match was a deal breaker for him - months of preparation and a slew of classical games meant that he would have little time to devote to other shorter time format tournaments. With that being said, match between Ian and Ding would also be incredibly entertaining. I look forward to it.
ghostly_s 4y ago
Wow, this site's GDPR cookie nag exhibits the worst dark pattern I've seen in the genre, and that's saying something.
veidelis 4y ago
I wonder what Magnus' suggestions for the WC format are. It's very well known that current classical format has the issue of a lot of memorization/theory. To me the issue does not lie in the time format as a lot of people here suggest, but the format of the game. I would appreciate if a couple of chess 960 (Fischer variation) games were added to current format to determine world champion of classical chess.
- haunter 4y ago
  He already talked about that 5 years ago https://www.chess.com/news/view/magnus-carlsen-proposes-different-world-championship-format-2693 https://www.chess.com/news/view/magnus-carlsen-proposes-diff... Single elimination knock out format like some big sport events (football/soccer World Cup, major league sport playoffs etc.) It can still be BO7/BO9 etc for example but it comes with more randomness (initial matchups) He just hates the current everyone plays everyone league format then the best score takes on the reigning champion (who didn’t even take part in the first round aka the Candidate’s)
parkingrift 4y ago
I don’t blame Magnus. It’s a ton of preparatory work year after year and I’m sure the idea of a rematch with Ian is not exciting for Magnus after Magnus absolutely trounced Ian. In the end this might be the beginning of the end for the “world chess champion.” The game is moving online, and moving to rapid or blitz.
Barrin92 4y ago
It's his choice of course but I think some of the argumentation is in bad taste. Suggesting to only play against Firouzja is bad sportsmanship, a player should not attempt to handpick their opponent. It's also disrespectful to announce this after the candidates tournament finished, in particular towards Nepomniachtchi but also the other players who expected to face the world champion.
- buzzdenver 4y ago
  He said the same thing way before the candidates.
- 8note 4y ago
  Why not handpick his opponent? The tournament hasn't been great at choosing opponents, and the format of the championship sucks
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    because if a title defender can handpick an opponent that creates glaringly atrocious incentives, the most obvious one being that they can pick whoever they think they're most likely to beat, turn down candidates they personally dislike, and so on. Basis of fair competition is that the process of selecting opponents is impartial and based on merit. Other two claims are hard to substantiate either. Why has the tournamnet not been great at choosing opponents? They've all won fairly and they've all been among the strongest players in the world.
fijiaarone 4y ago
Too many other people are using computers and earbuds to cheat too.
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smelbe 4y ago
Aside from watching the Magnus documentary about a younger Magnus while I was in high school, I have almost no knowledge about competitive chess. What sorts of things do chess players engage in during the course of the six months leading up to a match? Is there something that they're trying to remember or a video that they're studying (what would they be looking for)? From the beginning, I was under the impression that they might be played at any moment. This sounds like a really difficult situation.
langsoul-com 4y ago

872 points by CawCawCaw 4y ago

Good for him, and a great lesson for chess fans: Play the kind of chess that makes you happy, be it globetrotting super-GM invite-only tournaments or 500 games of back-to-back bullet on Lichess.

willhinsa 4y ago
...or play 250 hyperbullet games until 5:45 am during the Candidates tournament when you have a game at 3 PM the next day. https://www.chessdom.com/firouzja-prepares-for-nepo-with-the-250-games-hyper-bullet-match-vs-naroditsky/ https://www.chessdom.com/firouzja-prepares-for-nepo-with-the...
- jpeter 4y ago
  Did the preparation pay off?
  - __s 4y ago
    No

matsemann 4y ago

Time to change the format. It's understandable you don't want to spend your whole career preparing for these long matches all the time. For the challenger it's 6 months of preparing, but for Carlsen it would've been his 6th time of preparing for this in a few years. They have also become less entertaining. 12 matches is long (edit, 14 now), but no one dares to take any risks. Caruana was just defensive and all games ended in a draw. Karjakin they both at least won each their game, but still had to go to rapid tie-breaks. And against Nepo it was a steamroll, understandably meeting him again isn't that exciting. It's also almost impossible for a new person to get a chance. Even Carlsen didn't like the format and didn't participate in the Candidates for a few years, and when he first did he almost didn't win it to be allowed to play the WC match. Even though he clearly was the best player at the time. I wonder how this will affect the status of the title, when it's in practice is now a title-fight between the second best players. Also what will happen to the hype in Norway? Each WC match has so far been live streamed on all big news pages, biggest TV channels etc. It will still be a Christmas tradition to watch the rapid WC tournament I guess, but I'm afraid this will lead to less coverage. But just to tell how big Carlsen is in Norway: This is the top news on all outlets at the moment.

taude 4y ago
I know next to nothing about competitive chess, other than watching the Magnus documentary about a younger Magnus. What kinds of things are chess players doing to prepare for a match for 6 Months? Is there something they're memorizing, studying video (what would they be looking fro)? I'd have always just thought they were good to play at any time. This sounds super stressful.
- sgjohnson 4y ago
  > Is there something they're memorizing Yes. Their upcoming opponent's past games (including analyzing them for strengths and weaknesses), and engine lines mostly.
- matsemann 4y ago
  In a normal tournament, you meet so many different people (and you often don't know in advance exactly who you will meet of all the participants), so it's hard to specifically prepare. For a match of this kind, however, you know your opponent will prepare specifically against you. So you kinda have to do the same. That entails analyzing all of their games and finding defenses and weaknesses. But also trying to find new novelties in the openings etc. And since the opponent will do the same, you yourself have to prepare defenses for lots of potential new openings 16 moves deep or so. It's an insane amount of studying. Of course, that pays off for future games outside the match as well. But when you know your challenger will spend half a year on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to beat you, you probably have to do the same. So have to say no to everything else.
  - kamaal 4y ago
    Say a player just rote memorised moves from a chess engine and just played it. Would that be considered cheating?
    - moomin 4y ago
      It isn’t, partly because you needed to predict the scenario would come up and partly because your opponent can do the exact same thing.

ginko 4y ago

From the outside the champion system in chess seems so weird. I know they do something similar in boxing, but there it sort of makes sense because attending too many boxing tournaments isn't exactly healthy.

masklinn 4y ago
> I know they do something similar in boxing, but there it sort of makes sense because attending too many boxing tournaments isn't exactly healthy. Also a boxing match is a maximum of 12 rounds over 47 minutes (since 1982), not 12 games over 3 weeks.
- deleted 4y ago
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pmontra 4y ago
Many national go tournaments have a similar format in all of the 3 countries it's worth talking about (China, South Korea and Japan): the champion waits for the result of the challenger tournaments and plays only the final series of games (3, 5, 7.) International tournaments tend to be shootouts with everybody playing from the first round. You can get a picture of how they are set up by looking at the tournament tables at https://www.go4go.net/go/tournaments/news https://www.go4go.net/go/tournaments/news
- NhanH 4y ago
  Japan is the only country still have major tournaments with champion vs challenger format. None of the big tournament in China or South Korea has that type of game.
  - pmontra 4y ago
    I see. For example the Korean Kuksu had the champion/challenger format until 2008. Then it was discontinued in 2016 but that's another story. But China's Tianyuan is still champion/challenger (from 2022): https://www.go4go.net/go/tournaments/news/16 https://www.go4go.net/go/tournaments/news/16 I didn't check the others.

raptorraver 4y ago

I understand his decision but still I'm disappointed.

zmgsabst 4y ago

Hikaru kicking himself about that last game, now.

ourmandave 4y ago
I wonder if Magnus wasn't inspired by Hikaru's zero-f's given attitude, where he's just playing for fun or the challenge, instead of titles.
dlandis 4y ago
My thoughts exactly. One game away from playing for the world championship. Would have been awesome to see, and I think he would have had a very solid chance against Ian.

pdevr 4y ago

He has every right to decide so. It is his prerogative. Nonetheless, this will, for sure, be disappointing for many chess fans.

skilled 4y ago
I'm pretty sure 99% of Carlsen's fans expected him to do this since he has talked about it for a long time now. And as the article points out, he's still going to remain _very_ active in the Chess community, tournaments in particular.
- pdevr 4y ago
  Expected by many. Still, disappointing for many, including me :)

smitty1e 4y ago

Props to MC for going out literally at the top of his game. As Kipling noted: "Once in a while / We can finish in style".

jstx1 4y ago
He's not going out though - he'll keep playing chess and he stated that he wants to remain the best chess player. He's just not playing the World Championship match.
- eimrine 4y ago
  Magnus' streams in blitz chess are way more interesting than official plays IMO.
- smitty1e 4y ago
  Yes, finishing his World Championship affiliation.
prionassembly 4y ago
Oh, that's fancier than my ready-at-hand qute for these situations, which was 90s-girl-rocker Ani DiFranco: "so I'll walk the plank / and I'll jump with a smile / if I'm gonna go down / I'm gonna do it with style".

jmyeet 4y ago

Obviously this raised the issue of Bobby Fischer. The article mentions this but doesn't really go into the details. Fischer beat Spassky in Rejkyavik in 1972 for the World Championship. This took almost 3 months (July to September) and there was controversy, disagreement and negotiation about where and how it would take place. This had the backdrop of being a Cold War proxy too of course. Interestingly, Fischer didn't play competitive Chess after this. He was set to defend the title against the eventual challenger, Anatoly Karpov, in 1975. Fischer too didn't like the tendency for draws and proposed a format of first to 10 wins (with Fischer retaining the title in case of a 9-9). This was rejected and Fischer ultimately abdicated and never played competitive Chess again. He also became a semi-nomadic recluse too. But it also wasn't Fischer's first hiatus from the game. There was the 1972-1975 gap but also anotehr in the 1960s. He clearly seemed like a troubled guy. I've always found it fascinating the level of commitment required to play Chess at this level. I certainly have never had any interest in that (nor the ability, to be clear). No one really seems to know how to solve this without going to a more blitz like format. Chess at the highest level seems to revolve around memorizing a whole book of openings and defenses while being able to take advantage of mistakes but also finding novel approaches in standard openings and defenses but now it seems you have to go fairly deep into a game before you go off-book.

rawoke083600 4y ago
>Bobby Fischer For anyone that likes the weird, wacko and genius (all the same thing ?) there are few excellent short documentaries on YouTube about Bobby Fischer. Well worth a watch!
jstx1 4y ago
More like Kasparov because he remained active after the FIDE split. Still a bit different because Magnus isn't running a parallel WC of his own. It's also funny how the only 3 World Champions who have refused to defend a title because of disagreements with FIDE are probably the 3 best chess players ever.
- AmericanChopper 4y ago
  Fischer is clearly the goat in my view. But it’s not so obvious to me that Kasparov and Carlsen are better than say Vishy or Morphy or Botvinnik or Capablanca…

rawoke083600 4y ago

Honest question: Would somebody at this "level" be better than good at something like StarCraft ? Noted that SC takes more than "just strategy" i.e micro comes to mind. Like I would pay good money to see Serral Vs Magnus, maybe after some coaching sessions with Harstem ? :D ? EDIT: Just out of curiosity will there be anything else that someone at this level is "exceptional" good at besides chess ?

haunter 4y ago
He held the number 1 spot in the Fantasy Premier League for a time so yes https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/dec/16/chess-champion-magnus-carlsen-top-of-world-fantasy-football-rankings-premier-league https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/dec/16/chess-champion...
- rawoke083600 4y ago
  Oh interesting ! I didn't know that !
matharmin 4y ago
There is not that much overlap between skills required for chess and StarCraft. Being good at one may perhaps correlate with having some natural talent in the other, but experience in the specific game would matter a lot more.
inkblotuniverse 4y ago
I'd love to see that.
__s 4y ago
Magnus has been doing alright in poker, tho the volatility makes it harder to accurately measure what his level is there Pitting him against a pro StarCraft player would be a joke tho. For reference, Nina is able to reach 4800 MMR worker rushing every game. The mechanics alone would take a couple years of dedicated practice
rollcat 4y ago
"Good" as in, maybe reach GM? Quite likely, although being in GM already makes you a statistical outlier (200 slots per region in a player base of hundreds of thousands). Good enough to challenge a pro? You're seriously underestimating how much hard work the pros are putting in to play at their level - on top of the insane mechanical skill, game knowledge, and experience. Part of the skillset is obviously transferrable to other RTS games (big chunk of the AoE4 ladder was dominated by SC2 GMs early after launch), but playing (and staying) at pro level in SC2 requires much more - it requires consistency. Serral has 7.5K MMR not because he's been taking 20 MMR off a 7.4K player (because there are no 7.4K players), he has 7.5K MMR because he took 1 MMR from 6K players a couple thousand times. 6K is like what, top 50 GM? My bet in Serral v Magnus would be X:0 in a best of (X*2)+1, for any X the players would be willing to suffer through. (Sorry if my numbers are a bit inexact, the new season just started and GM is not open yet.)

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epups 4y ago

Hopefully now he can dedicate more time to reaching 2900, a much more interesting accomplishment than winning 1, 2 or even 5 more world championships in their current format.

deleted 4y ago
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Epa095 4y ago
Given that you get more points the higher ranked opponents you beat, the best way to get to 2900 might be to coach other players so they get higher scores, before beating them.

peter_retief 4y ago

Chess at this level is hard work, by resigning now he "sort of" stays world champion

sam_lowry_ 4y ago

Funny that they mention Arkady Dvorkovich, I would expect him to quietly retreat from managing current affairs in FIDE because of his high position in Russian civil service. How can one of the closest allies of Putin head an international organisation nowadays?

dmurray 4y ago
In March he condemned the invasion of Ukraine and stepped down from his other positions (which have not included working for the Russian state since 2018). You can always say he should go further, that he's tainted by his past links to Putin, or point out that if he had really turned on Putin he would have found polonium in his tea by now, but it's misleading to describe him today as "one of the closest allies of Putin".
- sam_lowry_ 4y ago
  Isn't he still the Chairman of the Board of Russian Railways, a state-owned company?
  - dmurray 4y ago
    According to their website, he left that board in 2020. https://ar2020.rzd.ru/en/corporate-governance/board-directors https://ar2020.rzd.ru/en/corporate-governance/board-director...
    - sam_lowry_ 4y ago
      So, he worked for the Russian state until 2020, then? Or until March 2022, when he resigned as head of Skolkovo? As you can see, he was sticking around until the war actually started. Did he precipitate the war by lending his name and skills to Putin? IMO, definitely yes. Should he resign from FIDE? Russians do not resign, they cling to positions of power indefinitely. Should FIDE fire him? Definitely yes, its rules are made for respectable gentlemen.
divan 4y ago

ShivShankaran 4y ago

Russia is playing China in the world championship. I wonder if US is getting a serious heartburn

dmurray 4y ago
Four of the world top ten currently [0] represent the US, versus one from each of six other countries. They're the favourites for the upcoming Olympiad. Elite level chess in the US is just doing fine. [0] add your own asterisks for how important it is, but all four moved from abroad, three when they were already world class players
- jstx1 4y ago
  It's 3 - Caruana, Aronian and So - https://ratings.fide.com/ https://ratings.fide.com/ Also, Caruana was born in Miami to Italian parents and lived in the US and played for the US until he was 12.
  - dmurray 4y ago
    And Nakamura, who is joint 9th on that list although it displays as #11. (he's outright 8th on the 2700chess live list, which I used originally but is less authoritative).
- ShivShankaran 4y ago
  At some point Americans have to realize that this unwarranted hostility towards China, Russia and India will bite them back. It's already biting the lower and middle class back and this is most likely the beginning of the end of American empire led by a senile demented dude. Love always trumps hate but the arms industry of US will keep pushing for arms inside and outside of US at all times even if the people being murdered are it's own kids.

ourmandave 4y ago

I feel like this puts a cloud over Ding vs Nepo. Like whoever wins, the title will have an an asterisk that says, "Only because Magnus bowed out."

bionsystem 4y ago
Ding had a really tough year last year, grinding his seat for the candidates with his country in lockdown. If he wins it's going to be well deserved in my opinion. Nepo really crushed it in the candidates, and frankly had a couple of good games against Magnus last time before he collapsed. If he wins I feel that there is some good merit as well. Obviously a lot of it is subjective. Mainly, I think the champion would have to beat Magnus in some future games or matches in other tournaments before truly gaining everybody's respect.

ycombinete 4y ago

Perhaps Magnus is going to pull a Kasparov and start his own competing World Championship.

mikaeluman 4y ago

The candidates might as well be the world championship. But they need to make sure wins give you e.g. 3 points and draws only 0.5. Even in the candidates this year Ian - having obtained a nice lead - played drawing lines with white to perfection. I don't blame him, it was the right decision. The incentive structure needs to change. Even after a draw, the concept of Armageddon games to give another half point would be interesting and useful.

__s 4y ago
How do you disincentivize win trading?
- mikaeluman 4y ago
  How do you mean one can trade when someone has lose? Do you mean that all russians agree to lose to their number 1?
  - Buttons840 4y ago
    He means I let you win with white, and you let me win with white, and we both end up ahead by doing so.
jstx1 4y ago
That's why as a spectator I wouldn't like a change in the format to a multi-player tournament. Changing it would be equivalent to making the candidates the World Championship and removing the WC match - basically getting rid of the most exciting part of following chess and keeping everything else the same.
tzs 4y ago
> But they need to make sure wins give you e.g. 3 points and draws only 0.5. As black under such a system I might be more strongly incentivized to go for the draw than under the current system. I'm already starting at a disadvantage by having black, so pressing for the win is extra risky, and if I do go for it and lose my opponent gains 3 points on me. If you want to reduce draws by playing with points you probably should included something that takes into accounts white's advantage. You want to make sure white has a strong incentive to push for the win, which in turn also increases the chances white will go too far, giving black a good chance to also push for the win. For example, asymmetric scoring such as black gets 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, and white gets 2 points for a win, 0 points for a draw. That system was tried in a couple or so tournaments around 2005 or so. As far as the format goes, I wonder if a small tournament coupled with something like the promotion/relegation system used in many soccer leagues would be good? Have a Champions Tournament that consists of 4 players that play a double round robin (or maybe a quadruple round robin?) for the World Championship. The participants are the current Champion, the runner-up from the prior Champions Tournament, and the top two from the Candidates Tournament. The Candidates Tournament would include the 3rd and 4th place players from the prior Champions Tournament, the 3rd and 4th place players from the prior Candidates Tournament, and some players who are invited based on rating, World Cup, and Grand Prix results. Maybe also make the Candidates bigger than it is now, say 10 or 12 players. That would be too long to hold as a single event, so split it. Play some of the games as part of the World Cup event and some as part of the Grand Prix events.

Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago

Abdicating the chess championship title by Carlsen without a match is actually a dick move towards his eventual (and inevitable!) successor, who would never be seen by a lot of chess fans as the 'true' chess champion of the Steinitz-Lasker-etc lineage - much like how to this day many people argue that Karpov would have never been able to defeat Fischer and thus isn't a true champion. (I personally think that Karpov would have beaten Fischer, and that's the biggest reason why Bobby ghosted on everyone.)

fairity 4y ago

My read on the situation is that Magnus had two goals: 1) remain world champion 2) get to 2900 elo #1 got in the way of #2 because all the elite grandmasters constantly focus throughout the year on preparing for Magnus, which creates a headwind in the non-world champion tournaments where he must perform well to reach 2900. My guess is he will focus on 2900. Then, come back as world champion. Then, retire after 7 championships or his performance deteriorates.

epolanski 4y ago
Isn't elo eventually inflated by the number of ranked players anyway? The more people will be eventually fide rated and climb through the distribution the more the better players will drift at higher elos. That's also a reason why in modern days we have more 2750+ ranked players than ever. One common, wrong, argument is that modern players play better, while this is true this does not affect the elo ranking at all. The elo system merely tracks how did you do against opponents with a different ranking and assigns a score based on the win or loss, how well the players did is absolutely irrelevant to the distrubition.
- matsemann 4y ago
  I think that the rating inflation debate has concluded that there isn't that much inflation. Compared to the old 2600 generation, the 2700 people now are just that much better. An analysis here: https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-elo-ratings-inflation-or-deflation https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-elo-ratings-inflation-or-d... It claims that a 2500 player now is better than a 2500 player in 2000. So in that sense it's actually been a deflation. Also https://www.playmagnus.com/en/news/post/rating-inflation-myth https://www.playmagnus.com/en/news/post/rating-inflation-myt...
  - epolanski 4y ago
    But that's my point: elo distribution has nothing to do with how good players are, it merely tracks your win/lose status against opponents with a different elo. If you take, e.g. two unranked players that are very bad at chess or two unranked masters they are still going to end up with a +16 and -16 elo change. And you can keep adding great or bad players to the pool, and elo is still going to only look at the outcome not how players play. The point with elo is that if there's only 2 players it is basically impossible to reach a 2000 elo, because even if one consistently wins at some point he's not gaining any point by beating the same opponent, thus to go from 1700 to 1800 he'll need to face an opponent that has a similar elo. The more people slightly below his skill the more he'll rise in the elo distribution, this trickles down all the way up and down. Of course it is very likely that modern 2500 players are better as they have better tools than players of 20 years ago, but the same applies to people lower and higher in rating. Thus, at the end of the day, the only factor that matters in an elo distribution and how wide it is, is the number of games and players. If tomorrow there will be an influx of another million ranked players the distribution will get a bit wider and this would also inflate in the long run ratings of the highest rated players.

SeanLuke 4y ago

It might be worth mentioning a famous abdication which caused a lot of consternation, albeit in another game. I love this story but may have gotten some details wrong. Marion Tinsley was world checkers champion from 1955-1958, then took a break, then again from 1975-1991, when he resigned in protest (at age 64). He was utterly dominant; indeed it is hard to think of a competitor in all of history more dominant over his sport or game than Tinsley. In 1990 Tinsley decided to play Chinook, the best checkers computer program in the world. Chinook had placed second at the US Nationals so it had the right to enter the world championships, but the US and British checkers federations refused to allow it. So Tinsley resigned his title. Tinsley then played Chinook in an unofficial match (which he won). This power play really stuck it to the federations: nobody wanted to be named the new world champion knowing Tinsley was fully capable of crushing them. Eventually everyone came to an agreement to let Tinsley be the "champion emeritus". Tinsley played Chinook four years later, at age 68, still probably the best player in the world. But in the middle of the match he complained of stomach pains and withdrew after only six games (of 20), all drawn. Tinsley's pains were real: he later died of pancreatic cancer.

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arbitrage 4y ago
Fantastic write-up. Thank you so much.
moffkalast 4y ago
Chinook was obviously playing the long con. Knowing Tinsley's weakness was his humanity, so it continued to draw until his frail human body succumbed to the forces of nature, thus winning once and for all.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
  Skynet doesn't have to do anything, it just needs to be patient. ...and self-replicating so it ensures its own survival long term of course, but that's a problem yet to be solved.

theduder99 4y ago

FWIW Hikaru pointed out that some of Magnus's complaints are kinda moot because Fide created the world rapid/blitz championships. If you prefer shorter games, go win that one. If you enjoy classic, then do the classic tournament.

jpgvm 4y ago
To be fair he does "go win that one".

xiaodai 4y ago

meh. this will never happen in shogi or weiqi world. chess is a mess. the issue with top level chess is that draws are the most common result. it doesn't matter for mere mortals like us but it does get boring to follow top level chess vs go and shogi. xiangqi's got the same issue

baby 4y ago
Go/weiqi really is much more entertaining than chess, but chess has won the west. I think the US has the same issue with football being quite boring to watch compared to soccer/rugby, but marketing has prevented the other sports to proliferate.
tweakimp 4y ago
Time for a chess rules change?

mark_l_watson 4y ago

I totally support Magnus Carlson’s decision. He really loves travel and playing in many tournaments and now he can do more of what he loves. I enjoy watching him, and others, do Chess streaming and I went to the US Chess Open in 1978 but I never even played 25 rated games so my rating was never official. I do like do slowly read through Chess games, especially old historic games. I do the same with the game of Go: I like the several hundred year old Shogun Palace games. I did take online lessons from a Korean Go master a few years ago, and once a month play a long game against CSPro Go program, let it spend an hour after the game analyzing my moves, then I look at what moves I should have played in critical parts of the game. I guess what I am saying here is that different people enjoy games differently, and I respect Magnus optimizing playing Chess for his own fun and lifestyle.

Lapsa 4y ago

he's just fucking with Naka :D

V-2 4y ago

While he's (this goes without saying) perfectly within his rights to do so. I feel this decision will undermine his status as one of the GOATs of the game in the long run. "However, one cannot say that he has beaten Caruana or Karjakin convincingly. [Both matches were decided on tiebreaks]. There were questions in his match against Anand too. If he had beaten all three of them as clearly as he won against Nepomniachtchi, I would understand Carlsen. But is he already tired of winning after winning one match clearly?" (Karpov)

why-el 4y ago
"Did Michael Jordan win all six championships convincingly? All series went 5 games or more."
- V-2 4y ago
  While Karpov's opinion is debatable of course (although the man knows a thing or two about the subject), I frankly can't see how this analogy is applicable here? If anything, Carlsen's WC matches fell definitely on the short side (which is one of the reasons why 2 of them were only decided on rapid tiebreaks, which is kind of ridiculous in and of itself; not saying it's Carlsen's "fault", but still). And all but the last one - where Nepo self-destructed anyway - were 12 games long. Back in the dya of Kasparov vs. Karpov a WC match was at least 24 games long - so for example Carlsen's both wins against Anand in 2013 and then 2014 combined were only as long as a single match before his era. And the (in)famous aborted match of 1984-85 lasted for 48 games. The struggle used to be much greater. How does the analogy with Jordan fit here exactly?
  - why-el 4y ago
    Both Jordan and Carlsen won championships. Many of Jordan's games were very tight, down to the last second. I can find another player who won more handsomely, that does not negate Jordan's achievements. That's the analogy.
    - V-2 4y ago

jari_mustonen 4y ago

Some ideas for rule changes that would make a draw less probable: 1. Make it so that repeating a position is not a legal move 2. Remove castling as a legal move Or, if the rules of the game stay the same, change the tournament format radically: 3. Force specific openings like they do in the computer chess tournaments. Both players play as white and black. Select positions that are far from equal.

soneca 4y ago

Can someone please explain to me (someone complete out of the world of chess) why he doesn’t like to compete in the World Championship but likes to compete in other tournaments?

kriops 4y ago
WC requires copious amounts of high-intensity prep, close to a year from what he has said before, so this is a ROI thing for Carlsen. He has spent half-ish (emphasis on the ish) of his adult life preparing specifically for WC matches.
- tgarv 4y ago
  Why does the WC take so much more prep than other tournaments? Is it because of the format, or just the pressure to win?
  - aaronblohowiak 4y ago
    Between candidates (the tournament) and the event (the championship between current champ and challenger) there is a large gap so the top two can have time to study each other. Other tourneys you aren’t putting in so much prep about all your possible opponents because there are too many of them.
  - fernandopj 4y ago
    In terms of preparing against your opponent, at their level and with enough time to think over the board, one has to know so much theory about many lines, that as white you're forced to find "novelties", which are brand new or mostly never played lines that might never come up in the game, in the hopes of throwing your opponent of their preparation. With black, you have to prepare a few opening lines and know them so well as to avoid surprises and maximize chances of at least a draw. This takes a lot of time and energy and memorization becames a huge factor. When you face many opponents, the ROI of deep studying a few lines doesn't pay off against people who have a myriad of styles, so memorization plays a lesser role; and you play many tournaments so having a few bad ones isn't such a big deal, comparing to playing for WC.

ComputerCat 4y ago

Wow, what an impressive run though!

t_mann 4y ago

In the short run at least, this might hurt FIDE more than Magnus. He's already the biggest brand in global chess by far, at this point becoming successful at the 'influencer game' (his podcasts, other content like the poker and fantasy football he got into as well, collaborating with other influencers like the - also Norwegian - highly successful former climber Magnus Midtbo,...) might do more for his brand than winning yet another title. That's assuming that's even his goal, he really just seems to be doing whatever he enjoys. And in the long run, FIDE will also be fine. There will be new talents, and as even Magnus admitted, it's hard to rival the 'official' world champion title in terms of global attention.

retzkek 4y ago
What might save FIDE, or at least keep it relevant, is if Ding being in the championship now can do for chess in China what Fischer did for chess in the US, or Anand for India. There's a potential huge market and player base that so far hasn't been very interested in international Chess (xiangqi and go are more popular). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_in_China On the other hand, this may be an inflection point toward online chess and faster time formats taking over for deciding who the "real" chess champion is. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, especially with the battle between chess.com and lichess.org for online mindshare.

SheetPost 4y ago

Weird flex: drop out of WC to promote scam artists: > I feel, the FTX Crypto Cup, which is going to be awesome

upupandup 4y ago

I guess when a particular game has been figured out thanks to AI, we will hear more and more professionals and world champions throwing the towel. Yes there will be a market for watching human vs human games but can we still call them the best of the best when some AI program can play it not only better but teach us more axioms and undiscovered patterns or rules? Good on him to call it quits, shouldn't impact his standing in the world any less.

SubiculumCode 4y ago

Face it FIDE, chess.com is where the chess world is at these days, and when in a mood, Lichess.

kriro 4y ago

He'll still play chess and wants to go to 2900 but I'm curious if he'll take a serious step at poker eventually. He's playing for fun already (played in the 2022 WSOP if I recall correctly) and he'd probably be very good at GTO studying.

bluecalm 4y ago

My view on this is that the current World Championship cycle achieves the opposite of what it should achieve: 1)There are many tournaments where the best player is not allowed to participate making them tournaments of second bests for no reason other than determining who plays in the Candidates 2)Other tournaments, even those with long tradition, are poisoned by the Candidates because many top players treat them as training ground for the Candidates (hiding preparation or not playing very seriously) or skip them altogether because the Candidates is more important 3) Candidates tournament itself is hyped as the most important event but it by design excludes the strongest player. If you told someone outside of chess about it they would rightly think only a complete moron could have come up with such system 4)Some tournaments with a lot of potential to be fun and competitive (Grand Swiss, The World Cup) cause a lot of controversy because some dinosaurs in the chess world think the strongest player shouldn't be allowed to play. Fortunately saner minds prevailed for now. What you end up with is a calendar full of events for the second best players which influence all other tournaments in negative way. Additionally tournaments with a lot of potential (Rapid World Championship for example) are treated as an afterthought by FIDE. 3 day very random event even though rapid chess if widely more popular than classical among casual chess fans. FIDE does everything to prevent fans from having fun following the game. Imagine half the tennis calendar excluding current number 1 player from participating. It's so ridiculous and obvious watching from the sidelines. Unfortunately a lot of chess insiders literally don't care about the game popularity and think the money they earn grow on trees (or come from the ground as the only serious sponsors FIDE could attract are oligarchs and they oil/gas companies). I am so happy Magnus is not interested in participating in this shit show any further. His reasons might be personal but it's a great chance more fun formats and tournaments take place and we can all have way more interesting game to follow.

triyambakam 4y ago
So if you win the WC once, you then only perpetually play the WC games and not all the games leading up to it? Yeah, that's really strange and seems to favor the incumbent
Roper333 4y ago

gautamnarula 4y ago

As a Magnus fan this saddens me, but his reasons are understandable: you've got one life to live and he doesn't enjoy spending a quarter of it preparing for these grinding, stressful matches. After five consecutive wins, including a crushing win less than a year ago, and 10 years as world #1, by a considerable margin for most of those years (the gap between him and #2 right now is the same as between #2 and #9, and this is the smallest gap it's been in some time), I think he can make a credible case that he has nothing left to prove and trying to get a 2900 rating is more interesting. On a related note, my suggestion for an updated WCC format: We should move away from all classical chess. Yes, that's the tradition that's been going for 150 years, but today so many of the biggest events are rapid and blitz (online tour events, Grand Chess Tour Rapid & Blitz events, World Rapid & Blitz Championships, not to mention two of the last three world championship matches being decided in rapid tiebreaks and many of the biggest classical events decided in rapid or blitz tiebreaks). So I believe the "World Chess Champion" should be the person who demonstrates mastery in a blended format of all three, to represent the importance of all three. The rapid, blitz, and classical portions all have equal weights (18 points)by following in the footsteps of the Grand Chess Tour Rapid and Blitz events where rapid games are worth 2 times as much as blitz. I suggest 6 classical games, worth 3 points each (1.5 for a draw); 9 rapid games, worth 2 points each (1 for a draw); and 18 blitz games, worth the traditional 1 point each (0.5 for a draw), with the cumulative score determining the winner.

fzliu 4y ago

Although a lot of folks are undoubtedly disappointed, props to Magnus for understanding that there are other great accomplishments to be had besides continuously winning the WCC. I think the format of the championship match was a deal breaker for him - months of preparation and a slew of classical games meant that he would have little time to devote to other shorter time format tournaments. With that being said, match between Ian and Ding would also be incredibly entertaining. I look forward to it.

ghostly_s 4y ago

Wow, this site's GDPR cookie nag exhibits the worst dark pattern I've seen in the genre, and that's saying something.

veidelis 4y ago

I wonder what Magnus' suggestions for the WC format are. It's very well known that current classical format has the issue of a lot of memorization/theory. To me the issue does not lie in the time format as a lot of people here suggest, but the format of the game. I would appreciate if a couple of chess 960 (Fischer variation) games were added to current format to determine world champion of classical chess.

haunter 4y ago
He already talked about that 5 years ago https://www.chess.com/news/view/magnus-carlsen-proposes-different-world-championship-format-2693 https://www.chess.com/news/view/magnus-carlsen-proposes-diff... Single elimination knock out format like some big sport events (football/soccer World Cup, major league sport playoffs etc.) It can still be BO7/BO9 etc for example but it comes with more randomness (initial matchups) He just hates the current everyone plays everyone league format then the best score takes on the reigning champion (who didn’t even take part in the first round aka the Candidate’s)

parkingrift 4y ago

I don’t blame Magnus. It’s a ton of preparatory work year after year and I’m sure the idea of a rematch with Ian is not exciting for Magnus after Magnus absolutely trounced Ian. In the end this might be the beginning of the end for the “world chess champion.” The game is moving online, and moving to rapid or blitz.

Barrin92 4y ago

It's his choice of course but I think some of the argumentation is in bad taste. Suggesting to only play against Firouzja is bad sportsmanship, a player should not attempt to handpick their opponent. It's also disrespectful to announce this after the candidates tournament finished, in particular towards Nepomniachtchi but also the other players who expected to face the world champion.

buzzdenver 4y ago
He said the same thing way before the candidates.
8note 4y ago
Why not handpick his opponent? The tournament hasn't been great at choosing opponents, and the format of the championship sucks
- Barrin92 4y ago
  because if a title defender can handpick an opponent that creates glaringly atrocious incentives, the most obvious one being that they can pick whoever they think they're most likely to beat, turn down candidates they personally dislike, and so on. Basis of fair competition is that the process of selecting opponents is impartial and based on merit. Other two claims are hard to substantiate either. Why has the tournamnet not been great at choosing opponents? They've all won fairly and they've all been among the strongest players in the world.

fijiaarone 4y ago

Too many other people are using computers and earbuds to cheat too.

deleted 4y ago

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smelbe 4y ago

Aside from watching the Magnus documentary about a younger Magnus while I was in high school, I have almost no knowledge about competitive chess. What sorts of things do chess players engage in during the course of the six months leading up to a match? Is there something that they're trying to remember or a video that they're studying (what would they be looking for)? From the beginning, I was under the impression that they might be played at any moment. This sounds like a really difficult situation.

langsoul-com 4y ago