Magnus Carlsen

Ding Liren will now step up and face Ian Nepomniachtchi · 'I simply feel that I don't have a lot to gain,' says world No 1.

“His decision not to defend his title is undoubtedly a disappointment for the fans, and bad news for the spectacle. And the conclusion is, it’s very simple, that I am not motivated to play another match.” The 31-year-old Norwegian grandmaster, who has spent over a decade as the top-ranked player in the world, said in a podcast for his sponsor Unibet: “I am not motivated to play another match.

Carlsen, a 31-year-old Norwegian native, was expected to have a rematch next year with Ian Nepomniachtchi, the Russian who he defeated in the 2021 world ...

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Norwegian 'not motivated to play another match' after more than a decade at the top.

GM Magnus Carlsen will not defend his world championship title against GM Ian Nepomniachtchi next year. Carlsen announced his decision on a podcast on ...

"It didn't come as a shock because surely it wasn't first the first time I heard about his intentions," he said. And to Miami which is going to be one of the real highlights of the year—the FTX Crypto Cup which is going to be awesome. We came to a new era." A world championship tournament, organized two years later, was won by GM Mikhail Botvinnik. In 1975, GM Bobby Fischer could not agree with FIDE on the match format and lost his title to Candidates winner GM Anatoly Karpov. I don't particularly like it, and although I’m sure a match would be interesting for historical reasons, I don’t have any inclinations to play and I will simply not play the match." I’m leaving later today to go to Croatia to play the Grand Chess Tour. From there on I’m going to go to Chennai to play the Olympiad, which is going to be a lot of fun, and the Norwegian team is seeded as number four there. I was happy I had not lost the match. I just decided it could be interesting, and ever since the World Championship title has given me a lot and opened a lot of doors, and I’m happy about that. "I was satisfied with the job I had done. Talking about this meeting in Madrid, Carlsen said: "I did not have any demands or suggestions for that meeting. The matches themselves have been at times interesting, at times a little bit of fun." The conclusion is very simple: I’m not motivated to play another match," said Carlsen. "I don’t have a lot to gain.

Lack of competition and the monotony of focusing on challenger are the reasons the world champion wasn't keen on defending title.

Or maybe he wants to learn a new sport, or perhaps he wants to go through the Candidates rigour again, or start a parallel chess universe. Moreover, the efforts in the build-up to the final seemed to outweigh the joy of playing the final and defending the crown. Two years before he became the World Champion, he dropped out of the Candidates because he felt the system was flawed. An indirect recurrence awaits—while one of Nepomniachtchi or Ding Liren would become the new world champion, Carlsen would continue to be the world’s best player by all yardsticks. Three years before that, he had almost pulled out of the final against Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, because the prize purse, he felt, was meagre but for the last-minute intervention of an American millionaire. Carlsen is not the archetypal chess nerd, who is wedded to the board, either. This was a sense of inevitability about it, the moment it emerged that he would have to defend his crown against the same man who he had defeated to win the fifth title last year in Dubai, Ian Nepomniachtchi. Soon after the final—the winning score of 7.5-3.5 with three games to spare was the most one-sided result in a world championship final in a century—Carlsen admitted to being tedious. The Norwegian, according to rumours, wanted a best-of-three-sets-of-four classical games each, where rapid and blitz would follow at 2-2. “It’s been clear to me for most of the year that this world championship should be the last. The prospect of duelling a young challenger excited him, but his ouster not just reduced but minimised his prospects of title defence. There was little shock in the chess world when Magnus Carlsen announced that he no longer intends to defend his world championship crown, firmly perched on his head since he snatched it from Viswanathan Anand in 2013. As is his nature, he plainly admitted as much in the decision-announcing podcast with friend Magnus Barstad. “I am not motivated to play another match.

Earlier today, the World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen confirmed in a public statement his intentions to not defend his title in 2023.

But chess is now stronger than ever —in part, thanks to Magnus— and the World Championship Match, one of the longest and most respected traditions in the world of sports, will go on. He is still young and could possibly have added more classical titles to his already outstanding career, as he will surely try in the Rapid and Blitz modalities, which he favours. Alas, it did not change his mind.

The decision by the world's best player to surrender his title means the game will have a new champion. But taking the crown is not the same as beating the ...

Carlsen is also far and away the top-ranked player in the world, a ranking he will not lose by not defending his title. The problem arose when Garry Kasparov, who had beaten Karpov in 1985 to become champion and then successfully defended his title against Karpov three times, was slated to play a match against Nigel Short of England, who had won the candidates matches. But, over the next decade, he showed that he was a worthy successor by dominating the competition. At the time, Fischer was in protracted negotiations with the federation, but when they could not come to an agreement, he chose to quit rather than play — despite entreaties from many people, including politicians, and the offer of millions of dollars for the prize fund. The decision by the world’s best player to surrender his title means the game will have a new champion. And for chess, that could be the hard part.