Bored With Chess? Magnus Carlsen Desires to Remake the Recreation

“Magnus Carlsen, the world’s high chess participant, is bored of chess,” the Washington Submit wrote Friday:

Carlsen has spent a lot of the previous yr showing to dismiss the sport he has mastered: It was not thrilling to play, he advised a podcast in March. In December, he withdrew from defending a world championship as a result of he was penalized for carrying denims to the event.

How would the world’s greatest participant boost the sport? Change the foundations, and add a contact of actuality TV.

Ten of the world’s high gamers gathered in a German villa on the Baltic coast this week to play within the first event of a brand new chess circuit, the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, that Carlsen co-founded. The twist: The tour randomizes the beginning positions of the chess board’s most necessary items, so every sport begins with the queen, rooks and knights in a jumble. [It’s sometimes called “Chess960” or Fischer random chess — with both players starting with the same arrangement of pieces.] Gamers need to adapt on the fly. Carlsen is backed by a cadre of buyers who see an opportunity to dramatize chess with the theatrics of a tv present. Gamers put on heart-rate screens and provides confession-booth interviews mid-match the place they strategize and fret to the viewers. Some purists are skeptical. So is the Worldwide Chess Federation, which despatched a barrage of authorized threats to Freestyle Chess earlier than it launched this week’s occasion.

At stake is a profitable international market of lots of of tens of millions of chess gamers that has solely continued to develop because the coronavirus pandemic launched a startling chess renaissance — and, maybe, the authority to resolve if and the way a centuries-old sport ought to evolve… The format is an antidote to the classical sport, the place patterns and techniques have been so rigorously studied that it is laborious to innovate, Carlsen stated. “It is nonetheless attainable to get a [competitive] sport, however it’s a must to type of dig deeper and deeper,” Carlsen stated. “I simply discover that there is too little scope for creativity.”
The article additionally consists of this quote from American grand grasp Hikaru Nakamura who runs a chess YouTube channel with 2.7 million subscribers). “An integral a part of common chess is that if you play, you spend hours getting ready your opening technique earlier than the sport. However with Fischer Random … it is a bit of bit looser and extra satisfying.” And German entrepreneur Jan Henric Buettner (one of many buyers) says they hope to deliver the drama of Formulation One racecars. (“Cameras mounted at desk stage peer up at every participant throughout video games,” the article notes at one level.)

The primary Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour (with a $750,000 prize pool) concluded Friday, based on the article, however “Carlsen didn’t play in it,” the Submit factors out. “He was upset within the semifinals by German grand grasp Vincent Keymer.” Carlsen’s response? “I positively discover Freestyle tougher.”

However Chess.com stories that Carlsen might be again to taking part in common chess very quickly:

International esports powerhouse Crew Liquid has introduced the signings of not only one, however two superstars of chess. 5-time World Champion and world number-one Magnus Carlsen and the 2018 challenger, world number-two Fabiano Caruana will characterize the membership forward of the 2025 Esports World Cup (EWC)… Carlsen and Caruana, contemporary from competing within the Weissenhaus Freestyle Chess Grand Slam, will first characterize Crew Liquid within the $150,000 Chessable Masters, which begins on February 16 and serves as the primary of two qualifying occasions within the 2025 Champions Chess Tour. The highest-12 gamers from the tour qualify for the EWC.
In an announcement video Carlsen reportedly trolls the FIDE, based on Indian Categorical. “The announcement video sees Carlsen put on a Crew Liquid jersey together with a jacket and denims. He then asks: ‘Do I’ve to vary?’ To this, somebody responds: ‘Don’t fret, we’re fairly chill in esports. Welcome to Crew Liquid.'”