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)

Bobby Fischer's Opinion About Why Paul Morphy Stopped Playing Chess

Chessbase.com has recently published two articles containing decades-old videos of Bobby Fischer analyzing chess games and talking about great chess players like Paul Morphy, Wilhelm Steinitz and Jose Raul Capablanca:

Rare video – Bobby Fischer analyses

Rare video of Bobby Fischer analyzing – (2)

At around the eight minute mark of the second video in the second post, FM Dimitrije Bjelica asks Fischer why Paul Morphy stopped playing competitive chess; this is a fascinating exchange, because Fischer--like Morphy before him--quit playing serious chess at the height of his powers and it seems likely that both great geniuses suffered from serious mental illness (Dr. Joseph Ponterotto's take on Fischer's brilliant yet tortured mind can be found here). This is Fischer's reply to Bjelica's question:

I don't know. He got fed up with the whole chess scene, you know. He could not get this match [to prove that he was the world's best player]. He thought that they were petty people. He thought that these people were not honorable...Just the people in chess, he felt that they were not honorable people. He did not like the type of people he met, I think. For example, Staunton refused to play him and Staunton did some dishonest things in their negotiations for a match: he did everything to avoid playing him, because he would have lost easily. He [Staunton] refused to admit this and he tried to make it appear that Morphy didn't want to play or something. 

Only a few years after that interview, Fischer cut short his own chess career for similar reasons, forfeiting his World Champion title because FIDE would not agree to all of Fischer's terms regarding his scheduled title defense against Anatoly Karpov. Fischer had very rigid--but well thought out--ideas about exactly how such a match should be conducted and he refused to compromise or change anything in his proposal. Being a perfectionist and wanting everything to be just right seems like a noble ideal but tightly clinging to such hopes/dreams in this most imperfect world can lead to a lot of self-inflicted suffering. Neither Morphy nor Fischer possessed the ability to accept the world the way it is and to function within the confines of how society is organized. In contrast, Garry Kasparov--who, like Morphy and Fischer--is a genius of the highest magnitude, has the most enviable capacity to recognize his own weaknesses and to focus on the art of the possible as opposed to obsessing over creating perfection. Kasparov feuded with FIDE much like Fischer did but Kasparov did not let the fools, the criminals and the dishonorable people chase him away from the sport that he loves. It is very tragic that Morphy and Fischer did not possess such rare inner resolve, strength and tenacity; it is very difficult to be a sensitive genius in an insensitive world--and it is eerie to listen to Fischer calmly speak about Morphy's plight just a few years before Fischer descended into his notorious period of self-imposed exile from the chess world.

The Beauty, Wonder, Mystery and Horror of Chess

It takes many mistakes for a basketball team to squander a 20 point lead but a chess player can throw away an equivalent advantage with just one hasty move--and that is the beauty, wonder, mystery and horror of chess: anyone can blunder at any time.

On November 27, 2006, World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik played the second game of his six game match versus the computer Deep Fritz. Kramnik received a $500,000 appearance fee for the match and could have earned an additional $500,000 by defeating the silicon beast. In an equal position, Kramnik uncorked this howler:



Even a rank beginner can see the computer's next move: Qh7 mate. Grandmasters, psychologists and journalists searched for explanations for Kramnik's oversight. Perhaps the best theory in this particular case is that the Nf8-Qh7 pattern is much less common than the Nf6-Qh7 and Ng5-Qh7 patterns, which presumably Kramnik would have seen instantly. However, this blunder may just be one more example of the complex nature of chess--and the peculiar way that the human mind processes chess moves/chess positions: a person who is capable of conjuring up splendid tactical combinations and deep strategic concepts is also capable of missing a one move mate threat. Even "simple" chess moves can sometimes be hard to find because a player has to simultaneously focus on multiple short term and long term considerations. Kramnik concentrated his analysis on trying to trade Qs and force the promotion of one of his Q-side pawns and it escaped his attention that in such a relatively quiet position a checkmate threat could emerge.

Often, when a chess player blunders he realizes it as soon as he completes his move but in this case Kramnik was oblivious; the Chessbase news report about the game provides this account: "Kramnik played the move 34...Qe3 calmly, stood up, picked up his cup and was about to leave the stage to go to his rest room. At least one audio commentator also noticed nothing, while Fritz operator Mathias Feist kept glancing from the board to the screen and back, hardly able to believe that he had input the correct move. Fritz was displaying mate in one, and when Mathias executed it on the board Kramnik briefly grasped his forehead, took a seat to sign the score sheet and left for the press conference, which he dutifully attended."

Here is another example of the world's strongest player missing mate in one. Wilhelm Steinitz, the first official World Chess Champion, castled in the following position against H.G. Voight in an 1885 game in Philadelphia, overlooking ...Qxh2 mate and losing in just 12 moves. 




One of the most famous blunders in chess history happened in Ignatz von Popiel-Georg Marco, Monte Carlo 1902. Marco, thinking that he was about to lose the pinned Bd4, resigned--not noticing that ...Bg1! would have broken the pin with devastating effect, threatening ...Qxh2 mate while also discovering an attack on White's Q.



In the 1964 Amsterdam Interzonal, Klaus Darga resigned after Levente Lengyel played ...R6xe2+ in the following position; Darga thought that if he took back he would lose material after ...Bxh4+ but he had overlooked that with his R on e2 he could answer the B check with Ke3. Shortly after resigning, a crestfallen and astonished Darga exclaimed, "My God, I have a winning position!"



"Chess is My Life" is the title both Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi--rivals for the World Championship in three contentious matches (1974 Candidates Final, 1978 and 1981 World Championship)--selected for their respective autobiographies. In many ways, chess is life: a chess game and a chess career contain moments of brilliance and moments of stupidity, moments of great joy and moments of aching misery, moments of great sportsmanship and moments of deplorable duplicity. In chess, as in life, the important thing is to savor the good moments but not become dependent upon them and to understand that even after the worst of the bad moments there will be an opportunity for redemption if you are patient and determined.