Magnus Carlsen Defends His World Chess Championship Title for the Fourth Time

Magnus Carlsen defeated Ian Nepomniachtchi 7.5-3.5 in the best out of 14 games World Chess Championship match that concluded last Friday. Carlsen first won the title in 2013, and he has now successfully defended his title four times. Carlsen has been the highest rated chess player in the world since July 2011, more than two years before he won the World Chess Championship for the first time.

The Carlsen-Nepomniachtchi match began with five straight draws, and computer analysis of those early games suggests that some of them are among the most accurately played games in the recorded history of the World Chess Championship. Of course, this match will not be remembered for the high degree of accuracy that the players displayed in those closely contested games, but rather for the series of blunders by Nepomniachtchi that resulted in him losing games six, eight, nine, and eleven.

However, even when the players were playing with an unprecedented accuracy level no one should have interpreted that to mean that Carlsen and Nepomniachtchi are superior to all of their predecessors. Carlsen and Nepomniatchtchi have access to computer engines and other resources not available to their predecessors. Carlsen and Nepomniatchtchi deserve credit for working hard to learn, memorize, and understand the computer engine analysis, but it would be foolish to suggest that great champions such as Wilhelm Steinitz, Emanuel Lasker and Bobby Fischer could not have performed at a similar accuracy level if they had been provided access to similar resources.

Given the resources available at the time, Lasker dethroned Wilhelm Steinitz in the 1894 World Chess Championship match and then held onto the title until 1921, when the 53 year old Lasker lost to the 33 year old Jose Raul Capablanca. Lasker's 27 year run as World Chess Champion remains not only an unbroken record 100 years later, but it is a record that has not been seriously challenged, though it should be noted that Steinitz did not lose a match from 1862 until Lasker bested him in 1894, and that Steinitz was likely the best player in the world from 1866-1894 even though his "official" reign as World Champion did not begin until 1886. Lasker and Steinitz demonstrated both great talent and tremendous work ethic to stay on top for so long, and those traits would serve them well in the modern era.

Similarly, given the resources available at the time, Fischer took first place in the last eight tournaments that he finished, he won 20 games in a row against elite competition, and he soundly defeated Boris Spassky to win the World Chess Championship in 1972. Perhaps the best measurement of dominant superiority is the distance between the top ranked player and his closest contemporary. When Fischer was at his peak, his rating (2785) was 125 points higher than the second best player's rating. A rating class is 200 points, so Fischer was more than half a rating class better than the rest of the world!

In contrast, Carlsen--who set the record for highest rating (2882) and currently has a rating of 2856 (not including the games from the 2021 World Chess Championship)--has never been ahead of the rest of the world by more than 75 points, and the margin between him and the second rated player has sometimes been as small as single digits. Yes, 40 or 50 points is a large margin at the very top, and it is significant that Carlsen has had an unbroken grip on the top spot for more than 10 years, but he has never been as far ahead of his contemporaries as peak Fischer was. 

Carlsen is a consummate sportsman who is enjoying a lengthy run at the summit thanks to his intelligence, steady nerves, and superb physical conditioning. Nepomniachtchi may come close to matching Carlsen's intelligence, but during the course of the match Carlsen showcased his significant advantages in the other two areas.

After clinching the championship with a game 11 win, Carlsen said, "I didn't expect it to go quite like this. I think it was just a very good professional performance overall. No regrets at all, just very satisfied." He added, "After five games there were five draws and I'd had very, very few chances to play for anything more. Then everything kind of clicked and after that it all went my way. You don't expect to necessarily run away with it in a world championship."

Nepomniatchtchi tried to explain why he not only blundered so frequently at key moments but also why he made some mistakes that are shocking for a player of his caliber: "The match of course consists of many aspects. It's not only chess preparation but physical and psychological preparation. Of course it's really tense and it's a little more tense than I expected. But I guess anyway the tension is not a reason to overlook some simple things that you would never overlook in a blitz game. What can I say? I should find out why it did happen and improve."

Viswanathan Anand, who Carlsen dethroned in 2013 to become World Chess Champion, once noted that winning a World Chess Championship match is "just a question of nerves." It is worth remembering that Anand had a disastrous breakdown in his first World Chess Championship match, losing four games in a five game stretch versus reigning World Champion Garry Kasparov in 1995 en route to losing the match 10.5 to 7.5, but Anand recovered to win the FIDE World Championship in 2000 before defeating Kasparov's successor Vladimir Kramnik in 2008 to become the 15th World Chess Champion. In other words, while this may have been Nepomniachtchi's one and only chance to become World Chess Champion it may instead turn out to be a painful lesson that helps him take the final step to the chess immortality that each World Chess Champion enjoys.

One might think that the amount of computer-assisted preparation in modern chess makes playing at an elite level easier than it used to be, but in fact the players are under a lot of stress and strain to not only remember many intricate prepared lines but also to be prepared for unexpected moves by the opponent; such unexpected moves can be particularly dangerous because those moves are computer-vetted before being tried out against a human, so when a human is faced with a computer-tested line that he has not seen that is a different challenge than being presented with a novelty that has not been verified by strong computers. Casual fans/observers are often frustrated by modern chess because they do not understand what that they are watching; when the players drew the first five games, casual fans/observers complained about the large number of draws in recent World Chess Championship matches, but then after Carlsen won four games many fans/observers mocked Nepomniachtchi for playing too fast and crumbling under the pressure. 

The reality cannot be accurately described without looking at the match as a whole: Carlsen's strategy was to play solidly but with tempered aggression, and to count on his steadier nerves plus superior physical conditioning to wear down Nepomniachtchi. Nepomniachtchi did not make the most of his chances in the early games, and his game six loss foreshadowed the match's outcome: game six was the longest game in World Chess Championship history, and Carlsen wore Nepomniachtchi down in that battle much like he wore Nepomniachtchi down in the match overall. Nepomniachtchi did not blunder in a vacuum; he blundered because of the mental, psychological, and physical pressure that he felt while combating Carlsen.

Further Reading:

Magnus Carlsen Retains World Chess Champion Title After Sweeping Fabiano Caruana 3-0 in Rapid Tiebreak  (2018)

Carlsen Retains World Chess Championship in Spectacular Style (2016)

Magnus Carlsen Convincingly Retains World Chess Championship (2014) 

Magnus Carlsen Captures the World Chess Championship (2013)

Where Should Magnus Carlsen be Ranked in the Chess Pantheon?

It is interesting and fun to try to rank the greatest practitioners of all-time in a given field but, no matter how conscientiously one attempts to be objective, such selections are inherently subjective.  My Pantheon series honored the 10 greatest retired professional basketball players of all-time, while also providing some recognition to four active players whose career arcs seemed destined to launch them into Pantheon territory. While I am proud of the work that I did on that project, there is a certain charm and elegant simplicity to Julius Erving's take on this subject; he has not changed his all-time starting five since he was in high school: Erving explained that his quintet "was, is, and always will be Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell, with Connie Hawkins coming off the bench as my sixth man to play guard, forward and center."

Erving has reiterated his philosophy in multiple recent interviews that he has conducted as part of his tour to promote his autobiography, Dr. J. Erving has made it clear that he is in no way disparaging the accomplishments and/or skill level of players such as Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James but he strongly believes that the evolution of the game and the emergence of new stars do not diminish the greatness of the game's pioneers; each great player should be appreciated for what he accomplished in the context of his era. In Erving's view, those who operate at the highest levels of greatness are part of a continuum, not a hierarchy: Erving does not believe that his high-flying escapades eclipsed those of Baylor and Hawkins but rather that he continued down the mid-air path that they blazed, much as Jordan, Bryant and James have subsequently continued down that path as well.

Erving's approach could also be applied regarding a chess Pantheon. Olimpiu G. Urcan notes that recently crowned World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen has evoked comparisons with many of the sport's most highly regarded champions because of his ruthlessly efficient playing style, cool nerves and ability to convert the slimmest edge into a win:

Our personal observation took in verbal contrasts and juxtapositions with no fewer than seven of Carlsen's great predecessors, including Paul Morphy, José Raúl Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine, Bobby Fischer, Vasily Smyslov, Anatoly Karpov and, of course, Garry Kasparov. Occasionally, commentators offered variations on this theme. One very notable one, in seeking an adequate Carlsen comparison, yoked together two previous world champions. On November 15, 2013, Kasparov tweeted that he "once described him [Carlsen] as Capablanca with the will of Alekhine." Another pundit, Susan Polgar, one of the commentators during the live broadcast of Game 10, made use of commercial product language, the lingo of soaps and cell phone sales: she described Carlsen as "an improved version of Bobby Fischer."

Perhaps Carlsen is an "improved" Fischer in terms of relative psychological/emotional stability--and those traits are certainly important elements in maintaining one's status as the world's best chess player--but both the chess ratings and the anecdotal evidence suggest that Fischer towered over his contemporaries in a way that is unmatched by any other player except, possibly, Morphy. How can one compare Morphy to Fischer, let alone to Carlsen? Carlsen is a full-time chess professional who has a team of seconds at his disposal, plus access to computer technology that has changed the very nature of the sport. If such computers had existed in Morphy's day would they have leveled the playing field or would Morphy's genius intellect have enabled him to process extra information more rapidly than his rivals? Morphy's style inspired the players who came after him, much like Fischer inspired a generation and much like Carlsen is inspiring a generation. Erving's continuum of greatness can be readily seen when making these comparisons.

Carlsen is already the highest rated player of all-time and the second youngest linear World Champion, narrowly trailing Kasparov for the latter honor. Where should Carlsen rank in the chess pantheon? Carlsen, to this point, has not been as dominant as Fischer but Carlsen shares Fischer's will to win/fighting spirit. There is also more than a whiff of Capablanca's elegant, deceptive simplicity to Carlsen's games; Carlsen's ideas often seem obvious in retrospect but the fact that he consistently beats elite Grandmasters proves that his ideas are not at all obvious until he executes them over the board.

One important element is the test of time. Erving has a "10 year rule": a player should not even be considered for all-time great status until he has logged at least 10 professional seasons (Erving has mentioned that Gale Sayers is perhaps the only exception he will make to this rule). Fischer once declared that he would regularly accept challenges for his World Championship title but he never played an officially sanctioned game of chess after winning that title in 1972; at the other end of the spectrum, Wilhelm Steinitz stood atop the chess world for 28 years, Emanuel Lasker reigned as World Champion for 27 years and Garry Kasparov wore the linear World Championship crown for 15 years.

Whether Carlsen reigns for three years like Fischer or nearly three decades like Steinitz and Lasker, he has already permanently etched his name in chess history by virtue of the quality of his games, his record-breaking rating and his decisive victory against Viswanathan Anand, a great champion in his own right. An old school chess "starting five" analogous to Erving's basketball "starting five" might include Morphy, Steinitz, Lasker, Capablanca and Alekhine. That quintet will always be special--and it is possible to make room for Fischer, Kasparov and Carlsen without either forgetting the past or dismissing modern players as products of superior conditions and/or technology