Magnus Carlsen might walk away from classical chess

[thom]

I think everyone here can probably sympathise when a job stops being about the bits you actually enjoy or are good at. I have no doubt Magnus is the best ever, but the vast majority of the effort in classical chess is spent away from the board. Slogging through an opponent and their team’s computer driven opening prep just isn’t super fun and probably isn’t why most people fall in love with chess. Anyone who has gone from being a programmer to being stuck in meetings and managing other people all day perhaps knows what it’s like to fantasise about packing it in and returning to simpler times.

[ale]

I believe that to people like Magnus it goes beyond "the job becoming boring" and his stance alludes directly to Fischer's disillusionment with the game – lacking in genuine and human creativity.

[dyauspitr]

Yeah Gukesh may have broken Magnus and kicked off some serious introspection on Magnus’ part.

[fracus]

As a casual spectator of chess tournament streams, I find speed chess to be much more enjoyable to watch. It isn't fun when the players aren't making mistakes. Classical chess feels like F1 racing where the work is done before the match with very little passing and timed chess feels like a derby rally with a lot of bumping and grinding. Just way more fun to watch.

[mcv]

I remember Michael Schumacher just riding one perfect lap after another. He'd always qualify as first, start ahead, ride his perfect laps, and nobody would ever overtake him. It's impressive, but boring to watch.

[eterm]

It's hard for some of the very best when they're no longer at their peak.

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 ).

[Etheryte]

Let's not forget that Magnus didn't lose his world champion title, he gave it up willingly after holding the title from 2013 to 2021. All those years where everyone else is focusing specifically on how to defeat him and still coming short. He's talked about this at length in interviews, mostly it just became incredibly boring.

[kadoban]

> 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.

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.

[stef25]

> Now he has to fight much harder for victories

Did he get worse or did the others get better ?

[Mistletoe]

Lebron has a saying- "Father Time is undefeated."

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.

[Timshel]

> but he used to be at a level where no-one could even scratch him.

As another factor could be that he is not doing the same quantity of prep anymore.

[Scarblac]

As an amateur player (~2000 ish), classical is where it's at. I love the feeling of deep focus that is so hard to find in the rest of life these days but that I can still get into in a serious, slow over the board game.

The problems of the top players are not those of amateurs.

[dismalaf]

Chess was far more fun 20+ years ago. Before everyone had a supercomputer-powered chess engine in their hands...

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.

[Theofrastus]

Chess960/Freestyle Chess is where it's at for me. There, the game feels fresh, it's about creativity and clever positional play. Sometimes when playing classical, it feels like a contest of who can memorize better, without room for creativity or passion. I'm not a particularly good classical player, but the mountain of grinding to get good just seems insurmountable to me.

[fingerprince]

960 has certainly gained some momentum and I very much hope to see Magnus continue to push it forward -- it's such a natural evolution of chess in the age of engines. Perhaps all it needs to take off is a world champion backing it who's less insane than Fischer!

[bsder]

The grind at the top is still a grind--in fact, it is the worst grind. To top that off, Magnus is in his mid-30s now.

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.

[mellosouls]

Old news tbh. Why do you think the current classical champion isn't Magnus?

He's long said he's bored with it; the recent Gukesh slam-the-board viral moment has just resurfaced his frustration with it.

[genewitch]

Didnt slam the board from what I saw, just the table, like in a cop show. And then nearly immediately stuck his hand out to shake in congratulation.

[kibwen]

Forget Chess960, abandon castling, abandon symmetry, embrace Transcendental Chess! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_chess

[pingou]

Interesting, but it's too bad the setup is not equal and you need to play twice to make it fair. I prefer Sumochess.

[baruchel]

Just my two cents: a very interesting website for playing chess variants — https://greenchess.net/ . It has a simple, efficient, and uncluttered interface with no ads and many variants available. Unfortunately, the number of active players is a bit low.

[usrbinbash]

The core problem is, that chess is essentially a solved game now.

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.

[matsemann]

I think this is a wrong take. Sure, opening preparation is important, especially in matches (like the World Championship), but once you're out of prep it's not "just a memory game". Magnus is known for squeezing victories out of dead equal end game positions, not because of memory (they're all new positions) but because of intuition and accuracy.

[addandsubtract]

I would just like to appreciate how good of a picture that is, where Magnus is slamming the desk, Gukesh is looking at him, and the chess pieces are suspended in mid air. You couldn't have staged that picture any better. I'm not sure what annual photo contests there are (sports? history?), but this picture should win an award.

[bufferoverflow]

Maybe it's a frame of a video?

[keyle]

Can't blame him. Getting older, the search space being so much clearer than before, razor thin margins, the concentration, the time spent before and during.

I think he plays a bit of poker too, maybe he can shine in that space too.

[dismalaf]

Unfortunately modern online hold'em is just as robotic and boring as chess.

Live Omaha was fun, but died off post-Covid where I live...

[bawolff]

I could imagine people are into chess for the challenge of it, and if you make it to the very top, the challenge goes away as there are no peers to play with.

[hn92726819]

All the pieces are strangely hovering in the second picture. I thought it might be an AI generated image or something. Nope, Carlsen punched the table: https://x.com/NorwayChess/status/1929257237190443042

[globular-toast]

This is the main reason I don't like games or sports. It's fun when everyone is new to the game, but the moment you get people practising and studying outside of the game it becomes work. Some people just have a higher threshold for this than others, it seems.

[debuggerson]

Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of chess, and I don't know much about the different rules or playstyles. However, I’ve come across some of Magnus’s videos before. I admire his confidence in his abilities, but I know some people don’t like him, thinking he has a high ego and can come off as cocky at times. While many may be happy to see his recent loss to Rukesh, there’s no denying he’s been the best for so long. Maybe he hasn’t found someone who excites him in classical chess, someone at his level.

After all, being unbeatable can be a lonely place.

[JodieBenitez]

Try chessboxing maybe :-P

[d_silin]

Blitz chess is still fun.