Magnus Carlsen's Decision to Not Defend His World Championship Title is Bad for Chess

A famous saying in the chess world is "The threat is stronger than the execution," but now that Magnus Carlsen has announced that he will not defend his World Chess Championship title we also see that the execution of a threat can be quite damaging.

Before the beginning of the Candidates Tournament to determine his challenger, Carlsen stated that he was not likely to defend his title unless a member of the younger generation such as Alireza Firouzja won the event. Carlsen noted that he had already defeated representatives of the prior generation and representatives of his own generation. I cannot recall another champion in any sport suggesting that his or her enthusiasm for fighting for the crown depended primarily on the identity or age of the challenger. A championship mentality is epitomized by trying to defeat whoever the challenger is.

As it turned out, Ian Nepomniachtchi--the challenger who lost the most recent World Chess Championship match to Carlsen--won the Candidates Tournament for the second consecutive time. Shortly after Nepomniachtchi prevailed, Carlsen declared, "I am not motivated to play another match; I simply feel that I don't have a lot to gain. Although I'm sure a match would be interesting for historical reasons and all of that, I don't have any inclination to play, and I will simply not play the match." Carlsen added, "The matches themselves have been at times interesting, at times a little bit of fun. But overall, I feel like it's my time to go from the world championship matches. I enjoy playing tournaments a lot. Obviously, I enjoy them a lot more than I enjoy the world championship, and frankly I don't see myself stopping as a chess player any time soon."

Carlsen made the announcement on International Chess Day, and to emphasize the point that he is only retiring from World Championship play but not from competitive chess, he promptly won the SuperUnited Rapid & Blitz Tournament, finishing atop a strong field that included Nepomniachtchi and Firouzja.

There have been 16 officially recognized, undisputed World Chess Champions, starting with Wilhelm Steinitz--whose claim to the title is undisputed, though the exact starting date of his reign is disputed--and running in an unbroken chain through Carlsen, who became World Chess Champion in 2013. There were also six "FIDE World Chess Champions" crowned from 1993-2006, and the less that is said about the split title era the better, but a brief summary of the lamentable time when chess imitated boxing's alphabet soup of champions can be found in my article about Viswanathan Anand defeating Vladimir Kramnik in the 2008 match that finally reunified the World Chess Championship title.

Becoming World Chess Champion is the dream of all serious chess players. When the World Chess Champion announces that he will not defend his title he thereby cheapens the value of that title, and this is even more true when the World Chess Champion makes it clear that he intends to keep playing chess. Thus, his message is that being the World Chess Champion does not matter very much, and in fact other chess competitions matter more to him.

Prior to Carlsen, only two of the undisputed World Chess Champions failed to defend their titles. Alexander Alekhine died while he was World Chess Champion, and Bobby Fischer refused to agree to match terms with challenger Anatoly Karpov, resulting in Karpov receiving the title by default in 1975. In the wake of Alekhine's demise, FIDE took over the organization of the World Chess Championship, starting with a round robin event in 1948 that crowned Mikhail Botvinnik as Alekhine's successor. Karpov, eager to prove worthy of Fischer's forfeited throne, ran off an incredible series of tournament victories and held the title until 1985, when he lost a match to challenger Garry Kasparov. 

This is not about whether Carlsen has a right to resign his title but keep playing tournament chess; he obviously has that right. The point is examining to what extent Carlsen has a responsibility to defend his title for, as he put it, "historical reasons." I would argue that the World Champion should keep defending his title until someone beats him, or until he has broken the record for holding the title for the longest time (which is either 27 years by Emanuel Lasker, or 28 years by Wilhelm Steinitz if you count the start of his reign in 1866). 

I am nowhere near the caliber of chess player that Magnus Carlsen is, but I have won the Dayton Chess Club Championship a record 10 times. I considered it a point of pride to fight for the title every year, and I only missed one DCC Championship from 1987 until the club disbanded in 2020. I won my 10th title in 2015 as a new father who was also in the middle of attending law school, and I did not hesitate to play in the 2016 event even though I knew that it would be very challenging to win a repeat title considering my life circumstances at that time; I intended to either win again, or "validate" my successor by participating in the tournament. Over that 33 year period, I was rarely the highest rated player in the tournament, and I don't believe that I was ever the highest rated player in the years that I won (I was the highest rated player some years when I failed to win, but that is another story for another time). The point is that either championships matter or they don't matter. To me, a championship--whether for city, state, country, or the world--means something, and it means something more even than events that offer bigger cash prizes. 

Magnus Carlsen has made it clear that being World Chess Champion does not matter very much to him, and that is sad for chess. I understand that the current cycle requires him to do a lot of preparation for one high pressure match, and then go through that process again without much respite. No one said that being a champion is easy. I also understand that Carlsen would prefer that the World Chess Championship match not be played with classical slow time controls--but there is something to be said for maintaining the tradition of playing slow time control chess in which most games are not decided by chaotic time scrambles. There are separate World Chess Championships for Rapid and Blitz, and Carlsen has already won both of those titles on multiple occasions. The World Chess Championship played at a slow time control is something special and different.

I respect Carlsen's accomplishments and I acknowledge his right to make this decision, but as a chess champion on a local level, as a dedicated participant in rated chess events, and as a chess fan I am profoundly disappointed.

Chess as Art, Chess as Violent Sport

Grandmaster Lubomir Kavalek, a two-time U.S. Champion who once ranked among the top 10 players in the world, used to write a weekly chess column for the Washington Post but now his writing is regularly published by the Huffington Post. His most recent column begins with a famous quote from artist (and chess player) Marcel Duchamp: "While all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists."

GM Kavalek notes that the fourth World Chess Champion, Alexander Alekhine, also saw a connection between chess and art: "To me, chess is not a game; it is art," Alekhine declared.

With all due respect to Alekhine, these categories are not mutually exclusive; chess is both an art and a violent sport. Later in his column, GM Kavalek offers a vivid description of chess' brutal nature--and its tremendous allure:

It doesn't hurt your body, but your brain, your ego. Instead of concussions chess players suffer humiliation after a terrible loss. They start to question their confidence, doubting the worthiness of what they do. But in the end, they collect themselves and go back to the chessboard. And some of them may remember Alekhine's words: "I consider chess an art and accept all the responsibilities that art places upon its devotees."

Here are two other notable Alekhine quotes that fit in with GM Kavalek's exploration of the dual themes of chess as art/chess as violent sport:

"For success I consider three factors are necessary: firstly, an awareness of my own strengths and weaknesses; secondly, an accurate understanding of my opponent's strengths and weaknesses; thirdly, a higher aim than momentary satisfaction. I see this aim as being scientific and artistic achievements, which place the game of chess on a par with other arts."

"During a Chess competition a Chessmaster should be a combination of a beast of prey and a monk."

Achieving chess mastery involves much more than simply acquiring basic technical knowledge about how to play; a master must have an artistic sense, a great fighting spirit and very stable nerves in order to withstand the highs and lows that inevitably occur in a chess game and in a chess tournament. Chess is highly respected as both an art and a sport in many cultures, though Americans often dismiss chess' artistic value and scoff at the notion of chess as sport.

Basketball, chess and boxing share fascinating similarities in terms of preparation, intensity and skill development but some people insist that chess is not a sport because it lacks the obvious physical component inherent in basketball, boxing and other activities that are universally considered to be sports. This way of thinking ignores two important points: (1) there is a physical component to chess in terms of energy exertion and mental/physical/emotional stress and duress; (2) it has not always been the case that sport is defined exclusively as an activity involving a certain amount of physical movement. Rune Vik-Hansen asserts that the idea of chess as sport should not be summarily rejected:

Claiming chess "is just a game," because it is rule based, and therefore unworthy of undue attention, is a tautology and explains nothing. Mind you, the activity we call life may also be perceived to be a game with rules and recipes. When asking if chess is a sport or athletics, what we're really asking is if chess players perform, and more so, in the physical sense of the word...Despite agreeing in newspapers' commentary fields that games and activities like chess, bridge, archery, dart, shooting etc., involve performance of some kind, still, the physical aspect seems to saturate contemporary understanding of what a sporting or athletic performance is. In a country obsessed with countables and quantifiables--what cannot be measured does not exist--we may ask if not the accent on the physical excludes the possibility for a finer perception of what "performance" or "achievement" might be. Few doubt mental gladiators perform, but what, where and how?  Is "blood, sweat and tears" (Johan Kaggestad, Norwegian athletics coach and TV commentator) or "motion" (1500-meter runner, Henrik Ingebrigtsen) the only criterion in a sporting or athletic performance or achievement?

I think that many people have a deeply ingrained bias against sustained intellectual concentration and against finding value in people who spend a lot of time thinking; that is why people who do well in school and/or express interest in non-mainstream subjects are often ostracized as "nerds." It is not considered normal to think too much or too deeply, so an activity like chess--which takes place in the minds of two competitors before being expressed physically/symbolically by the movement of chess pieces--is viewed with suspicion and even mockery in many quarters. Chess is difficult, chess involves thought and concentration, so it inevitably arouses suspicion among people who would prefer to think as little as possible and who see more value in running, jumping and throwing.

Instead of limiting the definition of sport to only include activities that generate "blood, sweat and tears," any rule-based activity that relies on skill should be considered a sport; some sports are mainly physical activities that include a mental component (such as basketball, boxing, football, etc.), while chess is a sport that is mainly a mainly mental activity that also includes a physical component in terms of energy exertion. It is not accidental that top level chess is dominated by young players; chess is very strenuous and thus energy and physical conditioning often outweigh the value of accumulated experience/wisdom.

Bobby Fischer Comes Home is a Beautiful Portrait of Genuine Friendship

The term "friend" has in many ways lost any real meaning now that it is possible to "friend" someone who you have never met and may barely even know. A true friend cherishes your positive qualities and loves you in spite of your negative traits; such a friend never stops trying to help you become a better person but does not abandon you if you have a setback in that quest. By his own admission, Bobby Fischer was a "difficult" person to befriend--but Grandmaster Helgi Olafsson made the effort to do so and he provided some measure of comfort to Fischer in the last stage of the great champion's life. Olafsson's book Bobby Fischer Comes Home: The Final Years in Iceland, a Saga of Friendship and Lost Illusion is a 143 page paean to the value of friendship, for without the intervention of Olafsson and the other members of the RJF Committee (the initials first stood for Robert J. Fischer but then took the double meaning "Rights, Justice, Freedom" after the group took up other causes as well) Fischer may have spent the last years of his life in prison.

In 1972, Reykjavik, Iceland was the site of Fischer's greatest triumph when he broke the Soviet monopoly on the World Chess Championship with a 12.5-8.5 victory over Boris Spassky; the margin would have been even more lopsided if Fischer had not lost the first game after making a speculative sacrifice in a drawish position and if Fischer had not forfeited the second game without showing up at all because of a dispute over playing conditions. Olafsson was a teenager when his homeland hosted that famous match and he saw several of the games in person; he recalls that a friend's father told him, "One day you might play Fischer or Petrosian [Spassky's predecessor as World Champion]!" Fischer never defended his title, retreating into a paranoia-fueled seclusion, but he emerged in 1992 to play a rematch against Spassky; unfortunately, the event was held in Sveti Stefan--violating a U.N. embargo against war-torn Yugoslavia--and the United States government issued a warrant for Fischer's arrest. Fischer lived as a fugitive for more than a decade until Japanese authorities detained him on July 13, 2004; the Japanese refused to either set him free or turn him over to U.S. authorities and the impasse lasted until Iceland--acting in response to the urgings of the RJF Committee--granted Fischer citizenship and agreed to give him asylum. Iceland received some criticism for helping Fischer, but--in an email reprinted in Bobby Fischer Comes Home--Olafsson explains why he acted on Fischer's behalf:

"There were many good reasons not to lend Bobby Fischer a helping hand whilst in Japan but given the strong possibility that the man was/is seriously ill was reason enough to try to help him. I will never regret that. Personally I make no distinction between, say, a schizo-paranoid, a person with cancer, a brain tumour or any other disease. Everyone should have some basic human rights. Jail was certainly not the correct place for Fischer."

Olafsson does not gloss over Fischer's well known--and quite despicable--anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism and paranoid rants against anyone who displeased him (a group that came to include just about anyone who ever came in contact with Fischer, including his closest family members and dearest friends). In his interactions with the deeply troubled genius, Olafsson alternated between gently challenging Fischer, patiently ignoring Fischer's outbursts until the storm passed and forcefully suggesting a change in topics--but he never abandoned Fischer and he tried to bring out the best in his friend. Olafsson sympathized with Fischer's justified outrage about his stored property being auctioned off but he did not feed Fischer's paranoid view that this action was part of some grand conspiracy. Sometimes, Olafsson just responded with silence when he knew that he could not offer any words of comfort; one such example happened after Fischer reacted to Olafsson humming by declaring, "I think I know your philosophy. It's like in the Monty Python song. Life's a bowl of s--- no matter what you make of it. Look on the bright side of life. Am I right?" Olafsson did not take the bait because he did not perceive that outburst as an insult or a challenge but rather as a symptom of a disease: "I believe that Bobby Fischer was suffering from depression. Taking medication or seeing a psychiatrist was never an option for him. He lay in bed for a good part of the day, a common sign of a depressive mood."

Olafsson describes a Fischer who was demanding, reclusive and self-centered but who was also capable of moments of kindness and tenderness. Fischer's default mode was one of wariness and distrust but when he felt comfortable in a situation he could be a charming and fun companion. Sadly, Fischer's friendship with Olafsson took the same course as most of the relationships in Fischer's life; Fischer blew up at Olafsson over a perceived slight and cut off contact with him. As you read Olafsson's heart-wrenching description of this episode you can feel the pain emanating from the pages. Far from being bitter, Olafsson expresses regret and sadness about how things turned out. A few months after that breach, Fischer died. He suffered a lot in his final days because he refused treatment, not trusting modern medical techniques. His physician, Dr. Eirikur Jonsson, recalls, "At no time did his character leave him...When Bobby Fischer was admitted to Landspitalinn in October of 2007 we realized that this individual intended to fight his disease all by himself. That day in January his fight came to the only possible conclusion. It could not have been any other way. What an incredible fighter. But for me and so many others his death was a very traumatic experience."

Near the end of the book, Olafsson writes, "I thought back to our last conversation, when he had said, 'Don't listen to my negativity, Helgi.' And I thought about his rants, the infamous interviews and his stubborn anti-Semitism. For me they were the expression of a desperate soul. Rather than talking about issues that were seemingly in his heart, I believed that they were expressing his own inner feelings. To me it always seemed that he was just expressing how bad he felt."

Olafsson offers a perceptive take on those notorious internet radio interviews: "Bobby would never acknowledge if he was going through a tough period. Most people who had gone through what he had been through in the nine months he spent in the Japanese detention centre would be in need of counseling. Sometimes he was very bitter, cynical and disillusioned. Nevertheless, after he settled in Iceland I never heard him repeat the wicked things he had said in the radio interviews during his stay in Hungary and Japan. It is a real tragedy how he disgraced himself time and again in those radio interviews.

I told him at our first meeting that such statements were unacceptable. About the 9/11 interview he later simply told me: 'I was tricked.' Bobby was not in a stable condition when Eugenio Torre and the journalists from the Filipino radio station phoned him after the attacks on the Twin Towers. They knew what to expect from him."

In contrast to the despicable, contemptible way that Torre and the others egged Fischer on and brought out the worst in him, Olafsson and other Icelanders attempted to bring out the best in Fischer. Fischer's last radio interview took place in 2006, hosted by Saga Radio's Sigurdur Tomasson; while not entirely free of his bigoted opinions (to put it mildly), this interview also featured Fischer calmly reminiscing about his days as a youngster in the vibrant New York chess scene and he offered his thoughts about various chess champions. Jose Raul Capablanca and Paul Morphy were Fischer's two favorites, while Fischer did not like Alexander Alekhine as much even though he respected Alekhine's strength. "Alekhine had a rather heavy style," Fischer said. "Capablanca was much more brilliant and talented, he had a real light touch...But the thing that was great about Capablanca was that he really spoke his mind, he said what he believed was true, he said what he felt." You don't have to be a psychologist to figure out that Fischer admired Capablanca so much because he considered him a kindred spirit both in terms of talent and outspokenness.

Fischer revolutionized chess with his opening innovations, his peerless endgame technique and his fierce will to win--and the increment-based chess clock that he patented has become standard fare in serious chess tournaments. He accomplished so much despite his serious mental health problems that one cannot help but wonder how much more he could have achieved if he had been able to stabilize his fragile mindset and volatile emotions. It must have taken an extraordinary act of concentrated will for Fischer to become World Chess Champion despite his illness; how many other great minds never become known to the world because their brilliance is trapped within a web of turbulent emotions and fears?