Magnus Carlsen to give up World Championship title

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.<p>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 <i>64</i>). 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.<p>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.<p>So Tinsley resigned his title. Tinsley then played Chinook in an unofficial match (which he won).<p>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 &quot;champion emeritus&quot;.<p>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&#x27;s pains were real: he later died of pancreatic cancer.

Time to change the format. It&#x27;s understandable you don&#x27;t want to spend your whole career preparing for these long matches all the time. For the challenger it&#x27;s 6 months of preparing, but for Carlsen it would&#x27;ve been his 6th time of preparing for this in a few years.<p>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&#x27;t that exciting.<p>It&#x27;s also almost impossible for a new person to get a chance. Even Carlsen didn&#x27;t like the format and didn&#x27;t participate in the Candidates for a few years, and when he first did he almost didn&#x27;t win it to be allowed to play the WC match. Even though he clearly was the best player at the time.<p>I wonder how this will affect the status of the title, when it&#x27;s in practice is now a title-fight between the second best players.<p>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&#x27;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.

Obviously this raised the issue of Bobby Fischer. The article mentions this but doesn&#x27;t really go into the details.<p>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.<p>Interestingly, Fischer didn&#x27;t play competitive Chess after this. He was set to defend the title against the eventual challenger, Anatoly Karpov, in 1975. Fischer too didn&#x27;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.<p>But it also wasn&#x27;t Fischer&#x27;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.<p>I&#x27;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.<p>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.

In the short run at least, this might hurt FIDE more than Magnus. He&#x27;s already the biggest brand in global chess by far, at this point becoming successful at the &#x27;influencer game&#x27; (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.<p>That&#x27;s assuming that&#x27;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&#x27;s hard to rival the &#x27;official&#x27; world champion title in terms of global attention.

Good for him, and a great lesson for chess fans:<p>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.

As a Magnus fan this saddens me, but his reasons are understandable: you&#x27;ve got one life to live and he doesn&#x27;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&#x27;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.<p>On a related note, my suggestion for an updated WCC format:<p>We should move away from all classical chess. Yes, that&#x27;s the tradition that&#x27;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 &amp; Blitz events, World Rapid &amp; 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 &quot;World Chess Champion&quot; should be the person who demonstrates mastery in a blended format of all three, to represent the importance of all three.<p>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.

My read on the situation is that Magnus had two goals:<p>1) remain world champion<p>2) get to 2900 elo<p>#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.<p>My guess is he will focus on 2900. Then, come back as world champion. Then, retire after 7 championships or his performance deteriorates.

The candidates might as well be the world championship.<p>But they need to make sure wins give you e.g. 3 points and draws only 0.5.<p>Even in the candidates this year Ian - having obtained a nice lead - played drawing lines with white to perfection.<p>I don&#x27;t blame him, it was the right decision. The incentive structure needs to change.<p>Even after a draw, the concept of Armageddon games to give another half point would be interesting and useful.

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.

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&#x27;t exactly healthy.

Hikaru kicking himself about that last game, now.

My view on this is that the current World Championship cycle achieves the opposite of what it should achieve:<p>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<p>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<p>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<p>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&#x27;t be allowed to play. Fortunately saner minds prevailed for now.<p>What you end up with is a calendar full of events for the second best players which influence all other tournaments in negative way.<p>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.<p>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&#x27;s so ridiculous and obvious watching from the sidelines. Unfortunately a lot of chess insiders literally don&#x27;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&#x2F;gas companies).<p>I am so happy Magnus is not interested in participating in this shit show any further. His reasons might be personal but it&#x27;s a great chance more fun formats and tournaments take place and we can all have way more interesting game to follow.

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

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.<p>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.<p>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.

He&#x27;ll still play chess and wants to go to 2900 but I&#x27;m curious if he&#x27;ll take a serious step at poker eventually. He&#x27;s playing for fun already (played in the 2022 WSOP if I recall correctly) and he&#x27;d probably be very good at GTO studying.

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&#x27;re trying to remember or a video that they&#x27;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.

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.<p>With that being said, match between Ian and Ding would also be incredibly entertaining. I look forward to it.

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?

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

Props to MC for going out literally at the top of his game.<p>As Kipling noted: &quot;Once in a while &#x2F; We can finish in style&quot;.

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

I wonder what Magnus&#x27; suggestions for the WC format are. It&#x27;s very well known that current classical format has the issue of a lot of memorization&#x2F;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.

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.<p>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.

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

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&#x27;t matter for mere mortals like us but it does get boring to follow top level chess vs go and shogi. xiangqi&#x27;s got the same issue

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

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.<p>How can one of the closest allies of Putin head an international organisation nowadays?

FWIW Hikaru pointed out that some of Magnus&#x27;s complaints are kinda moot because Fide created the world rapid&#x2F;blitz championships. If you prefer shorter games, go win that one. If you enjoy classic, then do the classic tournament.

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 &#x27;true&#x27; 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&#x27;t a true champion.<p>(I personally think that Karpov would have beaten Fischer, and that&#x27;s the biggest reason why Bobby ghosted on everyone.)

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?<p>Good on him to call it quits, shouldn&#x27;t impact his standing in the world any less.

It&#x27;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&#x27;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.

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

Some ideas for rule changes that would make a draw less probable:<p>1. Make it so that repeating a position is not a legal move 2. Remove castling as a legal move<p>Or, if the rules of the game stay the same, change the tournament format radically:<p>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.

I understand his decision but still I&#x27;m disappointed.

Wow, what an impressive run though!

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

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

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

he&#x27;s just fucking with Naka :D

Wow, this site&#x27;s GDPR cookie nag exhibits the worst dark pattern I&#x27;ve seen in the genre, and that&#x27;s saying something.

While he&#x27;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.<p>&quot;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?&quot; (Karpov)