AThe Candidates Tournament of the World Chess Championship begins next Friday in Madrid. Until a few days ago, the world chess federation FIDE advertised it with the face of Magnus Carlsen and the promise that whoever prevails among the eight grandmasters will be his challenger. Now the eight candidates came to the fore, because it is not at all certain that the 31-year-old Norwegian will compete again.
It may also happen that the runner-up in the Candidates Tournament will play against the first-placed for a debased title. After the World Cup in December, Carlsen made it public and has since confirmed that it no longer appeals to him to spend months preparing for a single opponent and to endure a long duel in which not losing is more important than winning. He actually only wants to do that to a “representative of the next generation”.
Carlsen has set other goals
Carlsen isn’t the first world chess champion to have the blues. When José Raúl Capablanca had been world champion for three years and there was no equal opponent in sight, he announced his retirement. While the Cuban changed his mind almost a century ago, it’s been fifty years since Bobby Fischer fought his only world title fight and then faded into obscurity rather than defending the title under rules he didn’t like.
Mikhail Botvinnik even had enough before he could prove to the world that he was the best. The Russians disliked the haggling over the World Cup mode so much that in 1946 they wanted to turn to science. A staunch communist, he allowed himself to be persuaded that he was more useful to the Soviet Union at the chessboard and two years later he took the title.
For Raj Tischbierek, the editor-in-chief of the magazine “Schach”, the fact that Carlsen has not made a binding declaration as to whether he will compete again is the height of uncollegiality. The candidates know neither what awaits the winner nor whether second place is enough for a world championship fight. Strange is the starting position for Alireza Firouzja, the designated “representative of the next generation”. Firouzja might find it wiser to finish second behind a player Carlsen doesn’t see as a worthy World Cup opponent and fight him with better chances for the title than against the all-powerful Carlsen.
Incidentally, Carlsen is far from thinking about retiring from professional chess. He just set himself other goals, for example to reach 2900 Elo in the world rankings, which he already leads by almost 60 Elo points. He finished first at the Norwegian Chess tournament in Stavanger last week, but his tally remains unchanged at 2864.
Viswanathan Anand played surprisingly well in Stavanger despite his already 52 years – apart from a curious blunder when he missed a mate-in-two. When the Indian was world champion himself from 2008 to 2013, he had his own kind of blues and didn’t win a single classic tournament. The spell only broke when Anand ceded the title to Carlsen and won the 2014 Candidates Tournament. It is the most difficult sporting competition in chess, and Carlsen’s blues probably also has something to do with the fact that he would secretly like to be in Madrid to win it himself.
