Carlsen said in an interview with the newspaper VG and in a radio statement that he probably will not defend his title next year.
He said the only circumstance in which he would likely play in the next world championship match is if his opponent is Alireza Firouzja
If Firouzja doesn’t win the 2022 Candidates tournament, that would put FIDE on the same spot they were in in 1975, when Fischer refused to defend his title.
Given what’s happening elsewhere, and not just in sports, it might be harder for FIDE to get the tiger back in the cage this time around.
If Firouzja does not win the Candidates, FIDE would have three main options, all bad:
(1) Acknowledge Carlsen has taken control of the world championship.
(2) Recognize the Candidates winner as the new world champion. (This is what happened in 1975.)
(3) Hold a world championship match between the first and second place finishers in the Candidates. (This is what happened in 1993.)
That said, the likelihood of (1) is zero.
The most likely option is (3). FIDE could claim the legitimacy of a 2022 world championship match.
The best outcome for FIDE is that Carlsen backs down.
But this could get very messy if he doesn’t.
He could decide to play a non-FIDE world championship match with Firouzja anyway – while FIDE is holding its own championship match under option (3).
Which would Americans say is the real world championship match then: Carlsen-Firouzja or, say, Caruan-Nepo?
Although I don’t like the idea of the reigning World Champion choosing his opponents, it can’t be said that Kasparov ever ducked anyone. Short had legitimately won the FIDE Candidates cycle, and both Anand and Kramnik were right below Kasparov in the ratings when he played them. Choosing to play Kramnik after he had lost a Candidates match to Shirov was outrageous and grossly unfair to Shirov, but Kasparov wasn’t doing himself any favors with that choice – Kramnik was a much tougher opponent for him than Shirov, and indeed took the title from him when they played. I can’t imagine Shirov doing that, given his previous results against Kasparov.
In my mind, it seemed silly in 1993 for FIDE to hold a “Championship” match between two people who had both lost to Short (who in turn was trounced by Kasparov), and with all due respect to Karpov (who proved himself magnificently at Linares the following year), I never considered him the champion in those years, and the same is true for the winners of the various knockout tournaments that FIDE held. Nobody had beaten Kasparov over the board, and as noted above, he wasn’t ducking anyone, so for me he was always the champion – until Kramnik beat him, and then Kramnik was the champion. After that, things got murkier, and I was happy to get back to only one champion after Anand beat Kramnik (nothing against Kramnik – it was just nice to end the confusion).
For the same reasons, I would probably continue to think of Carlsen as the Champion, as long as he keeps playing strong opponents and beating them. If he refuses to play anyone like Fischer did, that amounts to abdicating the title, and he would no longer be Champion in my eyes. It’s unfair to retain the title by refusing to defend it (or by avoiding the strongest contenders like Lasker and Alekhine did).
On the other hand, it’s bad form to unilaterally discard the system that made you champion. I didn’t like it when Fischer and Kasparov did it, and I won’t like it if Carlsen does it. Carlsen seems honorable enough not to abuse that position, but it sets a bad precedent. Eventually, someone will beat him, and we can’t guarantee that person’s honor.
okay, what did i miss? why is magnus making this announcement?
thanks, …scot…
Why? Go back to the Watergate era: follow the money!
I’m having a hard time following this reasoning. If someone other than Firouzja wins the Candidates and Magnus refuses to play him, how is that different from what Bobby did? Seems like pure abdication of the title to me. Your first two sentences seem to contradict each other.
I would still recognize Carlsen as the best player in the world, but no longer World Champion. And I think Magnus would be OK with that being the prevailing opinion.
The scenario in question is much more like what Kasparov did (continuing to play the strongest challengers on a regular basis, just not within the FIDE system) than what Fischer did (refusing to play anyone at all unless they agreed to his outrageous conditions). That’s my reasoning. I would still consider Carlsen to be World Champion for the same reason that I still considered Kasparov to be World Champion from 1993-2000 (or whatever year he lost to Kramnik – I think that was 2000). Fischer is an entirely different case. He not only refused to play, he officially resigned his title (although he seemed to have forgotten about that 17 years later when he played his silly rematch “for the title” (yeah, right) against Spassky, who was semi-retired and no longer among the world’s top 100 players – hardly a reasonable candidate for the World Championship).
Just to be clear, though, I am not at all condoning what Carlsen seems to be proposing. I will be very disappointed in him if he goes that way.
As I recall the discussion at the time, at least some of Fischer’s conditions weren’t all THAT outrageous.
He asked for terms, like draw odds, that other world champions had received in the past.
If Magnus prefers to play Firouzja, what are the gossip mongers saying? That Firouzja might be weaker than the other candidates, so Magnus wants to play Firouzja? Or that something romantic might be going on between the two of them, so there is likely to be a thrown match (in one direction or the other) or a quick draw? Or something else? Inquiring minds want to know.
Bill Smythe
I think the champion still had draw odds anyway at the time in question. Fischer wanted a bit more than that – his conditions required the challenger to win by a 2-point margin. He also wanted a match of unlimited duration, and they actually tried that for the next few matches – until finding out in 1984 why it wasn’t such a good idea.
FWIW, I think a drawn match is problematic no matter what you do. I don’t like the current procedure of deciding it by rapid/blitz/armageddon playoffs. But anything else is just as arbitrary.
Best solution is for the champion to retain the title. To be the champion one should have to beat the champion.
Alex Relyea
No.
Ideally, I think a modified version of Fischer’s proposal would be best: draws are ignored, and the winner of the match is the first person to win a specified number of games. The trouble with Fischer’s proposal was that the specified number was higher for the challenger than it was for the champion, which gives the champion an unfair advantage. But if you make that number the same for both players (as FIDE did in 1978, 1981, and 1984), you have solved the “drawn match” problem, because it’s impossible to have a drawn match.
Of course, the 1984 match showed the disadvantage of this method. Nothing is perfect. In the real world, you have to limit the number of games, and now we’re back to needing some way to resolve a drawn match. Note that “draw odds” for the champion is also an unfair advantage, as is the champion being seeded directly into the title match, while the challenger has to win a Candidates Tournament (or, in the old system, a series of Candidates Matches) to get there.
Another approach (and possibly a better one) is to model things after team sports rather than boxing. In the major team sports, a defending champion has no advantage at all (other than the superior ability that got them the championship in the first place). Everyone starts a new “season” (which could be a 2-year or 3-year cycle rather than every year) with the same 0-0 record, and the defending champion has to do the same things to win the championship that anyone else has to do. However, no matter how you structure this, you still need some way to break potential ties. That problem seems inescapable except in Fischer’s method – and even there, you might need a tiebreak to determine the challenger.
Given the practical limitations of the real world, I’m not sure that any of these is better than the way they currently do it. There is no perfect system.
There are many ways of seeding events, all of them favor someone, usually the higher rated player/team.
I agree with Alex’s reasoning, and disagree with Micah’s lack of same. I especially dislike determining a champion by the use of a totally different disciple for which there is already a separate world championship. At least in soccer there is no such thing as the world penalty kick championship. By the way, I’m fine with those same tiebreaks in events other than the world championship. For instance, in the US Championship, the defending champion might not even be in the tie.
I also don’t like having rapids or Armageddon games decide the world championship, but I don’t really like penalty kicks deciding the World Cup, either, and I think the NFL’s overtime rules are dumb and the college football overtime rules got dumber this year. And the MLB rule putting a runner on second base for extra inning games changes the strategy too much.
But the unlimited length match problems were demonstrated by Kasparov and Karpov. A world-class player can almost force a draw as white against another world-class player.
For soccer, instead of penalty kicks, I’ve always liked the idea of widening the net by about 1 meter in each overtime period. The first overtime, the net would be 1 meter wider than standard; the second overtime, 2 meters wider; etc. That would make a GO-O-O-O-O-OAL much more likely. Each overtime would follow the same rules as the regular portion of the game.
If each overtime is, say, 20 minutes, whether sudden death or not, that should increase the scoring possibilities enough to make it less and less likely that the score would still be tied at the end of each successive overtime period.
What do you think of that idea, Baba Looey?
Bill Smythe
I’m not a soccer (i.e., football for everyone outside of the US) fan, but even aside from the logistical problems (are the nets adjustable, or would they have to bring out a whole new net for each period?), I don’t like it. For the record, I don’t like baseball starting each extra inning with a runner on second either – especially when that runner “earned” the right to be on second by making the final out of the previous inning! I don’t think scoring should be made easier in the overtime period. If they’re worried about games going too long, then just allow ties.
As for how this applies to chess, I would be OK with a drawn match resulting in co-champions. Maybe that’s unsatisfactory to those who want a single champion, but to me it’s better than any of the more or less arbitrary procedures that have been devised for determining that single champion. If you can’t win the main match, then you don’t deserve to be the exclusive champion. You can share it. If you want it all to yourself, then take some risks and try to win the match. Don’t ask me how the co-champions defend “their” title the next time around. I haven’t figured that out yet. Perhaps a scenario such as I mentioned in a previous post would be best: the champion doesn’t defend his title at all. He starts from scratch like everyone else – like they do in all the major team sports.
Exactly why “Champion retains title with a drawn match” is the best solution.