The best chess player in the world no longer wants to be world champion, he prefers to crack an unachievable high score

Norwegian Magnus Carlsen (31) has been the world’s best chess player since 2011. He is a five-time world champion but has now lost interest in defending the title. Instead, he has a new goal: he wants to break the ELO rating, the “chess high score”, of 2,900. Nobody before him has managed to do that. Many consider this to be practically impossible.

How good is Magnus Carlsen at chess? Magnus Carlsen is better at chess than most other top athletes are at their sports. All statistics speak for it:

• Carlsen has been world champion since 2013 and has defended the title four times
• Carlsen snagged number one in the FIDE chess rankings on July 1, 2011 and has held that position in the sun to this day
• In 2014 he also achieved an “ELO rating” of 2,882 – no one has ever been that high

What is it with the world title? The world championship title in chess has been played out every two years since 2014: The strongest challenger then has to defeat the reigning world champion in order to become the new world champion.

Carlsen became world champion in 2013 and has defended the title 4 times since then:

• In 2013 he defeated the Indian Anand in 10 games.
• In 2014, Carlsen won the rematch against Anand
• In 2016 he defeated the Russian Karjakin
• In 2018 he won against Caruana from the USA
• In 2021 Carlsen won against the Russian Nepomniachtchi

Actually, it would be Carlsen’s turn to defend the world championship title again in 2023, against the then strongest challenger.

Carlsen is no longer interested in defending the world title

Carlsen now says: In a podcast, Carlsen announced that he had lost interest in defending the world title. He will no longer compete in a match. He says:

I just feel like I don’t have much to win anymore, I just don’t like it too much.

Carlsen says: In the long run, it shouldn’t be about results for him, it has to be about passion, he explains.

Therefore, such a World Cup match would certainly be exciting and historically relevant, but Carlsen had no reason to take part.

What’s happening now? 2023 will see the next two best chess players in the world go head-to-head: Russian grandmaster Ian Nepomniachtchi, whom Carlsen defeated in 2021, and China’s strongest player, Ding Liren.

What does Carlsen do? Carlsen will continue to play chess and is planning the next matches.

However, he has set his sights on a different goal: he wants to achieve the legendary “2,900 ELO rating”, which is regarded as “The Mount Everst of chess”.

In order to achieve the goal, he must beat high-ranking other players. Apparently that’s more important to him than such a stupid world title.

The ELO rating is a value that describes the strength of chess players. You receive ELO points for victories, defeats cost you ELO points – how many points you win or lose depends on the ratio of your own ELO number to that of your opponent:
– “Normal players” have an ELO value of around 1200.
– Good players are around 1600 points.
– From 2000 the real experts start.
– From 2200 you are considered a master.
– From 2500 as Grandmaster.
– Carlsen and his opponents hover in the 2700+ range.

Carlsen just can’t play a draw

What is the problem with this ELO rating? It’s a problem that many MMO players should be aware of: at the very top of such a distribution curve, it’s insanely difficult to get close to the final goal. There is no more room for error:

• There are few players of such a high level that Carlsen still scores significant points if he beats them. Because nobody is higher than him, so he always appears as a favorite against weaker ones.
• Even if you win, there are only a few points that jump out as a reward. Every defeat and every draw: costs him valuable points.
• In addition, many matches at the top level end in a draw, a draw. Because in order to win a chess game at a high level, you have to “win big”, just having one bishop more than your opponent is not enough in the end, since “king and bishop” vs. “king” is a typical draw.

This is a problem for Carlsen because if there are ties in weaker games (i.e. against everyone else), he loses more points.

Carlsen’s tedious grind has been on display since September 2021: he received 1.5 ELO points for a win against Croatian Sasa Marinovic. A draw against Poland’s Wojatszek cost him 2.1 points.

Ultimately, Carlsen played 14 matches in September, winning 8 of them, but because he also drew 6, his rating increased by only 8.4 points. And September was a great month for him.

In March 2021, Carlsen played 13 matches, won only 3, played 9 times discriminated and even lost once. That already cost him 15.3 points: The defeat against the Russian Esipenko alone hit the mark with -7.4 points. This one defeat threw him back umpteen won matches.

So he’s doomed himself with the aim of tackling an almost impossible grind.

Carlsen currently has 2,864 points, but he has played practically no rated games in the last 5 months. How long he needs to get the missing 36 points is completely open. “Theoretically” it would probably be enough to win about 30 games in a row against grandmasters – only that seems to be an impossibility, since every draw and every defeat puts him a good deal behind.

In recent years, many video gamers discovered their love for chess and some chess players their love for the streaming service Twitch:

Chess grandmasters discover Twitch, talk fast, play faster

The cover photo is from a YouTube video on Magnus Carlsen’s channel