Highly fascinating post!!!!
Part of how Carlsen is described could have also applied to Petrosian or Karpov. I think calling Carlsen a non-chess player is overdramatic and poor sportsmanship. His opponent could just as easily wait-out Carlsen, it he had the courage and the abilitiy. More interesting is Gennady's remark about Carlen being computerized and uninteresting. That is something that has concerned me for some time now, but I'm unsure how to express. But I do think Genna is correct that Carlsen is probably the first really strong and complete product of computerization. But I'm not sure it makes him uninteresting. Carlsen is a modern marvel for whatever reason.
There a lot to think about here. Thanks. You made my day.
In a recent interview at Whychess Alexey Dreev (at best #14 a few years ago) states that “Karjakin plays chess, in contrast to Carlsen”. He declares that Carlsen
“prefers to wait for his opponent to make a mistake rather than try to outplay him as real chess players do”
That Carlsen wins by waiting for mistakes is a surprisingly common description, but I think Spassky said it better when he meant that Carlsen always tries, no matter how dry the position may look, to create difficult problems for his opponents. It isn’t just “waiting” that produces mistakes by the opponents, it is their having to defend gradually worse positions against a stronger player.
Many players try to kill all play and grind out a draw against Carlsen, and when a 2750+ player tries to draw it isn’t easy to complicate things, like in Nakamura-Carlsen, where Tkachiev writes at Whychess that Carlsen’s going for the draw was “in no way justified”. Still it was Nakamura who went for a very dry line with white, and Carlsen said that he had tried hard to find a line that kept the position alive but failed. In his games against Wang Hao Nakamura played win-or-lose chess and lost both games, but against Carlsen he tried to hold a draw. This can lead to some draws where little happens, and some endgame grinds where Carlsen wins by “waiting”. Draw with black against a 2780 opponent like Nakamura isn’t too bad though, and Carlsen won his next games with black against players in the 2730s.
Tkachiev writes that no previous #1 played the openings worse than Carlsen. But he reached #1 at a much younger age than anyone else and hasn’t had time to get as deep preparation as players like Anand and Kramnik, who have been world class for 20 years. Still, if Carlsen’s preparation is as bad as it is being said, his play after that has to be even better to reach his results, but Whychess articles can be rather critical of Carlsen.
So even if Dreev isn’t alone in his negative views on Carlsen, implying that he doesn’t even play chess, isn’t a real chess player, etc, are quite condemning statements to make (about a colleague Dreev faces over the board, and played against the week before). Not least compared to Dreev’s views on himself: “I really am a high-level chess player. In the whole history of chess there’ve been perhaps 100 of those, and I’m one of them”.
Tkachiev writes that Carlsen’s performance in Biel provokes a lot of questions. According to Tkachiev one could try to explain it away by him not being in form, but concludes that there are good grounds to believe that it is a “systematic crisis”. Tkachiev’s conclusions were published before Carlsen’s last wins, but also then he had been very close to winning two other games. Tkachiev also means that the fact that Carlsen isn’t capable of finding new ideas is a long-established commonplace, and that it’s unlikely that he’ll ever become World Champion unless he does something about his openings. Of course Tkachiev also writes positive things about Carlsen, but on the whole I find it surprising that there is so much criticism directed towards him considering his results.
Sosonko recently complained at Whychess about the idea of having to write about Carlsen. He means that there used to be living legends in chess while now Carlsen is #1, a player who is a product of computerization and doesn’t learn from the classics (according to Sosonko), and, as he implies, there is nothing of any interest whatsoever to write about. The exasperated quote in the headline states “Sosonko: Imagine I had to write about Magnus Carlsen”, but it’s not like older top players like Botvinnik, Korchnoi or Fischer always were endearing personalities or particularly interesting apart from their chess.
Another recent Whychess headline states: “Magnus Carlsen: Am I tired? What a stupid question!” Someone who doesn’t go through the article won’t understand that the quote is made up. What Carlsen does say on the question if he’s tired of interviews is that he thinks giving an interview is simpler than playing a game or preparing for it. In the headline Carlsen’s answer was changed to: “What a stupid question!”, which makes him sound a bit arrogant, but I presume this is unintentional.
On the whole the Whychess articles are interesting, even if the negative views on Carlsen sometimes feel exaggerated. He has after all won 11 of his last 16 tournaments, and lost one single game in ten months. The latest bunch of critical comments on Carlsen’s “disappointing” chess were published during Biel, where he has performed Elo 2929 with two rounds to go. Even if it “only” was a bit over 2800 at the time of the most negative comments it is still his eleventh 2815+ performance in a row, so talking about him having a “systematic crisis” seems premature.
Some links:
http://whychess.org/en/node/1485
http://whychess.org/en/node/2220
http://whychess.org/en/node/2409
http://whychess.org/en/node/2478
http://whychess.org/en/node/2483
http://whychess.org/en/node/2521