Anyone doing anything at the level of "Elite in the World" is putting in an amount of effort that borders on mania that would be classified as mental illness.
Don't get me wrong, Magnus is still world #1 for a reason, but he used to be at a level where no-one could even scratch him. Now he has to fight much harder for victories, and he's not enjoying that.
It's hard to determine how much is down to that factor, how much is how he feels over not being world champion anymore, and how much is a financial incentive in attempted break aways from FIDE to promote "freestyle chess" ( random chess ).
https://www.chess.com/blog/LionChessLtd/age-vs-elo---your-ba...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277316182...
Magnus is 34, he's just going to have to deal with it like every exceptional person has.
I think it's a shame for the sport that he wasn't willing to risk losing his WC title over the board, but make no mistake, he has lost his WC title regardless.
It's always about Pleasure / Pain
I get the sense that it's less he has to fight harder to win, and more he has to grind boring studying just to even play. I don't _think_ he'd care that much if his win rate is going down if just being there didn't require spending all day, every day, memorizing lines.
Did he get worse or did the others get better ?
As another factor could be that he is not doing the same quantity of prep anymore.
I think he plays a bit of poker too, maybe he can shine in that space too.
Live Omaha was fun, but died off post-Covid where I live...
The problems of the top players are not those of amateurs.
While studying openings was a thing, it still felt like there was room for improvisation and tactics. Now playing feels like a chore and more about rote memorization than actually playing a game.
If even pros make mistakes at that level, it should get rid of much draws and overly long games. And perhaps even appeal to a wider audience in our sped up society.
Even with gaps of 200 points the thinking and play speed difference is acute at high levels, for example in Magnus' playful "too weak, too slow" casual blitz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY27lgnPKWI
I read the above and it made me feel he was annoyed that Chess is a strategic zero sum game? "preparation and memorization than pure skill and innovation" - I think (at least in the zero sum strategy game I love) - prep + data IS the skill and innovation, how do you prep and where do you get your data, that's the joy of the game?
No, he's complaining about the depth of the decision tree at the start of the game.
So any variation that eliminates the need for preparation is a gain for both the winner and the loser.
And Magnus Carlsen is not a sore loser, he can both out-prep and out-calculate anyone in the world; hence the credibility of him suggesting that classical is not fun is higher than anyone else’s - because they could be called sore losers…
What's your game of choice, out of interest? I personally love Magic: the Gathering because it is a brilliant balance of preparation ahead of time, whilst rewarding quick thinking in game (with a fair dose of variance).
It's not entirely surprising that both of these world champions saw that as a way to keep the game interesting.
Something else that Magnus sometimes does, even against fellow grandmasters, is play a completely ridiculous opening that's obviously bad. But more importantly, it's different, and all the existing opening theory goes out the window.
He's long said he's bored with it; the recent Gukesh slam-the-board viral moment has just resurfaced his frustration with it.
After all, being unbeatable can be a lonely place.
There is no human that can outplay the top chess algorithms. This commodization of top skill, means everyone can afford to play against, and learn from, an entity that is above human skill.
Once this point is achieved, the skill focus dramatically shifts: The better player is the one who can hold and query more data learned from the above-human-skill entity in his human brain. Which, don't get me wrong, is still a beyond-impressive skill at the level of top players, but its not what people really enjoy or mean when they talk about "Chess".
In a very general way, this is a problem that afflicts not just Chess, but all solves games where players have complete information about the game state.
JodieBenitez•1d ago