Opinion: The World Chess Championship Isn’t Interesting Anymore
Greetings, and welcome back to the Hornet Editorial!
It has been over a year since my last post (which was an April Fool’s day post so that doesn’t really count)
Why come back to writing after being absent a year you ask? Well, I admittedly missed blogging and I forgot how much I enjoyed doing it. Regardless, I am back… at least for now. So, I hope you enjoy this read as much as I did writing it. Thank you!
Introduction
The 2024 World Chess Championship just concluded with Grandmaster Gukesh Dommaraju coming out victorious. His victory wasn’t as dramatic as you’d think, with Ding Liren making a mindless game ending and tournament finishing blunder in Game 14.
The tournament came and went and as we head further and further into the 21st century, real questions have to be asked. Should chess adapt with the times? Or, should FIDE hold their ground and be sticklers for tradition? In my opinion there are three main factors as to why the World Chess Championship has become uninteresting and in a way dull. In today’s blog, I will lay out those three reasons and how the World Chess Championship can be made great again.
The Format
The format, particularly the time controls for the World Chess Championship have changed several times over the tournament’s history.
The current format gives players 120 minutes for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes for the next 20 moves, and then 15 minutes + 30 second increment for the rest of the match. The current format is a lot better than the original format which gave players 120 minutes for 30 moves and then an additional hour for every 16 moves played.
The format has improved over the years, but it still is not ideal, especially considering the digital age we live in now. Younger people interested in chess looking to tune into a WCC match will have to endure hours upon hours of watching two people take long periods of time to make moves.
Even Magnus Carlsen himself docked the format saying,
*The main reason is that I don't enjoy it. It's as simple as that. Under the current format, there is absolutely no chance [of my return]."
- Magnus Carlsen
The reason why events such as the SpeedChess tournament and time controls such as bullet have become so popular is because people like a fast paced sport. I couldn’t name one person my age (17) who have the time or the inclination to watch a 6-hour game of chess. This is mostly due to Gen Alpha’s rapidly decreasing attention span, but that’s another story.
If FIDE is interested in getting younger people involved in chess, they have to make the World Chess Championship more accessible to them. Now, I’m not arguing for the WCC to be a series of blitz matches, but a shorter time allotment per game would be more challenging for the competitors and more interesting to view.
The “Engines”
Chess engines. Now, I’m not just talking about the chess engine your friend may have used to cheat in games, but also the engines behind the scenes of the World Chess Championship.
The World Chess Championship is a one on one matchup between the two best players in the world right? You would be wrong. Behind the cameras and the chess board, teams of highly skilled grandmasters, known as “Seconds” are working to ensure that their player, whoever that may be secures victory. The Seconds’ job could include any of the following things:
- Opening Preparation
- Game Analysis
- Opponent Profiling
- Emotional Support
- Testing Ideas
- Time Management Strategies
The Seconds make sure that the World Chess Champion Candidate has as little to think about as possible when at the chess board.
How do they do all of this? You guessed it: Chess Engines.
Former World Chess Champion, Vishy Anand was among the first to pioneer chess engines and chess databases such as ChessBase
As told in the documentary “Magnus”, Vishy relied heavily on these databases for his game preparation in the lead up to the 2013 World Chess Championship. Anand’s Seconds would use these databases to compile games from Magnus Carlsen to find any potential weaknesses in his play.
Now, Vishy Anand lost the 2013 World Chess Championship to Carlsen as we all remember, but that was 12 years ago. Chess engines have only gotten better as the years go by. And who knows how AI is going to effect the game as we know it in the years to come.
How does this have a negative effect on the WCC?
- Players use engines to prepare opening lines with incredible depth — Often 20 to 30 moves ahead. This makes games feel pre-scripted and lacking creativity.
- Players often use risk averse strategies recommended by chess engines. This leads to lengthy draw streaks and generally uninteresting chess
- Brilliant moves played during a match are unlikely to be the creation of the player himself but more likely of his Seconds
This is where I draw the line between an individual and a team sport. It’s near impossible to have a fair fight between two grandmasters when the match heavily depends on the skill of the Seconds.
The World Chess Championship would be much better off if Seconds weren’t allowed and the two competitors were allowed to have a one on one battle. But all of that is irrelevant, because we haven’t even arrived at the last and most contributing factor yet.
And that would be….
Magnus Carlsen
When Magnus Carlsen announced to the world that he would not defend his World Chess Champion title in July of 2023, he shook the whole of the chess community to its core. Only one other time had a World Champion refused to defend their title and this time was no less shocking.
As a result, the World Chess Championship became less interesting. Magnus had dominated the World Chess Championship for 10 years at that point and lots of people were not prepared for that to change. Unsurprisingly, the World Chess Championship became a battle for second place. With Carlsen still active in the tournament field, the World Chess Champion title didn’t have the same ring to it as it once did.
Ding Liren bested Ian Nepomniachtchi in 2023 and as stated earlier Gukesh Dommaraju bested Ding Liren in 2024. But none of those players could stake a claim at being the best since clearly Magnus had proven otherwise.
Inevitably when you remove the best player in the world from your “best player in the world” tournament, things are bound to become less interesting. It would be the same as removing Lionel Messi from the World Cup or Connor McDavid from the NHL. It just wouldn’t be the same. And it won’t be the same until either Magnus returns (which he has already ruled out), or a new young prodigy rises up and somehow proves without playing Magnus himself that they are better.
Of course Gukesh dreams of having his showdown with Carlsen, but the grim reality is that future World Chess Champions in the years to come will have to live under Magnus Carlsen’s shadow.
This compiled with the other reasons I laid out in this post are why I think that the World Chess Championship needs some serious reform.
But what do you, the reader think? Do you agree? Disagree? Either way I respect your opinion, but I hope you’ve seriously contemplated my position.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the only way to make the World Chess Championship great again is for FIDE to wake up and see the change around them. The 21st century has changed the game of chess as we know it, and if FIDE knows better, they had better adapt to the times or they’ll risk sending professional chess into irrelevancy.
And as for Magnus, even though he’s reluctant to return to the World Chess Championship, I hope he does regardless. He’s a once in a generation type of player and the World Chess Championship is a time honored event that deserves respect. So get yourselves together FIDE and Magnus. We’ll be waiting.
Thank you for reading this post! I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please leave a comment, your opinion, or your feedback down below!
Signing off,
- @ArtyPentti
