Magnus Carlsen will not defend his world championship title in 2023 against Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi. The five-times title winner will instead aim for a new record playing level.
Carlsen explained, in a podcast for Unibet: “ I am not motivated to play another match. I feel that I don’t have a lot to gain, and I will simply not play.” He said that he had thought about his decision since well before the 2021 series where he defeated Nepomniachtchi without losing a game.
The months of work required before a match where many games reach computer-assisted opening preparation are a major negative. In the Bobby Fischer era title matches were staged every three years, but it has since dropped to two, meaning that Carlsen has had to schedule several months of prep every other year.
A 40-minute meeting in Madrid on 3 July between Carlsen and Fide’s two top officials seems to have triggered the final decision. Carlsen wanted the world title match to be drastically revamped, with perhaps a set of four rapid games a day counting for a single match point, elements of blitz and bullet, and slow classical games much reduced, while for Fide is was essential to continue the championship’s long tradition since 1886 of classical games dominating the format.
The decision to walk away was always on the cards, but the shock to chess fans was that Carlsen announced it so early, many months before a host city or prize fund was announced and a player contract was available. He did it on International Chess Day, thus respecting a Fide deadline which has since been denied.
Carlsen’s timing may have been a shrewd move in the context of the ongoing question whether he or Garry Kasparov ranks as the greatest of all time. The Norwegian can now concentrate on the events he likes best, and in the next two months he will be playing in major tournaments in Zagreb, Chennai, Miami, and St Louis.
Kasparov, who won seven career titles, said:“Magnus has been a great champion and will continue to be one. Perhaps there was no way to reconcile his need for creative expression and the classical match format I myself favour. Staying on top is harder than getting to the top because you are competing against the feeling you have achieved your life’s goal already. Staying motivated after climbing the chess Olympus is like climbing Mount Everest a second time, or a sixth. Humans need purpose.”
The 2023 world title match will now be between Nepomniachtchi, the current world No 3, and China’s world No 2, Ding Liren. This could prove a low-key affair, with a downside risk that it ends up like the last world women’s championship, half in Shanghai and half in Vladivostok.
Beijing-Moscow seems more likely, and there is also potential for the series to defy gloomy predictions. Many Russian fans still remember the decades of Soviet chess supremacy and will eagerly embrace the chance to restore it, while Covid-ravaged China will have the opportunity to spark increased interest in Western chess compared with Chinese chess (Xiangqi) or Go.
When Fischer resigned his Fide world title in 1975, he still regarded himself as world champion, and his 1992 return against Boris Spassky was announced as a title defence, though few believed it. When Kasparov broke from Fide in 1993, he set up a rival organisation and for more than a decade there were two world champions.
Could anything like that occur in future with Carlsen? There is no sign of it in his statement, and in a few weeks he will represent Norway, the No 4 seeds, in the 187-nation Fide team Olympiad in Chennai. The chess world will continue to accept him as No 1. Yet the words “world champion” have marketing value and losing them could involve a financial cost which his managerial team will seek to replace.
The test could come in a few years if Alireza Firouzja, the Iranian-French 19-year-old who Carlsen named as an opponent he would be ready to meet for the title but who failed at the recent Candidates, again becomes a credible opponent. Would Carlsen then meet Firouzja outside Fide in a series which there would be pressure to call a world championship match?
Meanwhile, Carlsen and Nepomniachtchi had a subdued rapidplay draw on Wednesday in round one of the Zagreb rapid/blitz. They will meet again at five-minute blitz, easily viewable live and free online, on Saturday at 4.30pm and Sunday at 3.30pm.
3825 1 Na3! c4 2 Ba1! c3 3 Nb3 mate.
