The World Championship(s)

Difficult questions about the upcoming match could mean big changes

The world championship match between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Ding Liren is scheduled to take place in April of 2023. Despite the start date being less than three months away, little is known about the match: the format, venue, and even the location remain a mystery. Beyond these details, even bigger questions loom about the world championship going forward: who gets to play, in what format will it be contested, and who’s calling the shots.

The lack of information about the match could reflect difficulties in finding a suitable sponsor, and understandably so. As the defending World Champion, one would expect Carlsen to defend his title in this match, but in a highly unusual move he decided to step down from the title voluntarily. Carlsen cited fatigue and a general dissatisfaction with the grind of preparing for and playing in a title match as reasons for his decision.

Sponsors may see this championship as a battle of also-rans. While both of the challengers have strong track records of tournament success, neither are household names. Nepomniachtchi was Carlsen’s challenger in the previous World Championship match, but lost decisively. Ding has consistently ranked in the top five players in the world, often number two behind Carlsen, but tends to stay out of the spotlight. If FIDE wanted to introduce these combatants to a wider audience and build a narrative around them, they should have started already; but given that the match doesn’t even have a location, this seems unlikely to happen.

Photo: Maria Emelianova/Chess.com

Carlsen’s absence isn’t their only problem. Many potential sponsors would also be uneasy with the links between the match and Russia, given the continuing invasion of Ukraine. Nepomniachtchi, of course, is Russian, and FIDE president Arkady Dvorkovich is a former Kremlin official.

If there was any doubt that Carlsen is still the best player in the world, it was laid to rest with victories in the World Blitz and World Rapid championships in December of 2022. To triumph in two long tournaments, back-to-back, featuring most of the best players in the world, was an impressive display of dominance.  In a telling moment, Carlsen said that the blitz championship was the one he was most proud of:

“To some extent the blitz title is very important, because it’s more rounds than rapid, and although rapid is extremely gruelling as well, this one feels even tougher. As for the classical World Championship, I’ve won it, but it wasn’t dear enough to try and hold on to, so to some extent now this is really big.”

Such comments reflect the growing acceptance of fast time controls in serious competition. It used to be that blitz was what you played in the skittles room after the “real” games were over, but today, the importance and prestige of blitz tournaments and titles is steadily increasing.

At the same time, online chess is picking up steam. In a 2022 State of Chess video, Chess.com Chief Chess Officer Danny Rensch confirmed that Chess.com would be acquiring the Play Magnus Group, of which Carlsen owned a large stake. The deal had been announced in August of 2022, but some wondered if the cheating scandal involving Carlsen and Hans Niemann would throw a wrench in the works. Apparently not: Carlsen appeared in the State of Chess.com video to endorse the deal. Chess.com was already the biggest chess company in the world, and in Play Magnus, they’re acquiring one of their biggest competitors, as well as the ability to work closely with Magnus himself.

Reading the tea leaves, the temptation for Carlsen and Chess.com to position one of their own events as a “World Championship” will be enormous. While Carlsen has grown tired of the classical world championship cycle, he still loves chess, and he may love winning even more. While he’s said the world championship title is not very important to him, I wonder if at some point he’ll once again crave official recognition as the world’s top player. An online and/or rapid championship could let him have his cake and eat it too: reclaim the world title without going through the classical match process that he’s so sick of.

As far as Chess.com, they’ve historically stuck to online chess, but with pandemic restrictions relaxed in many parts of the world, they no doubt recognize over-the-board chess as a big opportunity. A big chunk of their Hans Niemann report covered evidence of cheating in OTB events – perhaps a signal of increasing interest in that realm? At the same time, even the most charitable observer would have a hard time defending FIDE’s stewardship of chess with a straight face, and they seem well on their way to dropping the ball when it comes to promoting the Ding-Nepo match. One might reason that more competent and dynamic leadership could make chess more popular and accessible for everyone, while making a buttload of money en passant.

Would there be any downside to such changes? Well, from a competitive standpoint, it doesn’t seem ideal that one player, Magnus Carlsen, would be so closely involved in deciding how the world championship is contested. For now, it’s mostly a moot point: Carlsen is obviously the strongest player in the world no matter how you slice it. But Father Time is undefeated; at some point Carlsen will start to decline, and when that happens, small edges in the match format would be magnified.

There is also the question of tradition. Carlsen has made it clear he prefers faster time controls, but the world championship has been contested at a slow pace for over a hundred years. I tend to agree with Carlsen: I find classical tournaments to be gratuitously slow. Even so, I would feel uneasy about deciding the World Championship with blitz or rapid. There’s something fitting about observing chess’s most prestigious event at a stately pace.

Then again, there’s also a long history of world champions wielding their power to influence how matches are contested, and Carlsen is hardly alone in wanting a faster-paced format. Maybe he just reflects the times. Chess is more popular than ever, but even the most diehard fans aren’t going to sit through a six hour game end-to-end. If the world championship is going to be a popular spectator event with big-time sponsors, it will have to be faster paced. For the moment though, the clock is ticking on FIDE to find a venue to ensure the match happens at all.