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World chess champion Carlsen: "It was pretty bad"
Photo: Koen van Weel / AFP
When Magnus Carlsen talks about his games, he sometimes puts on a pained expression.
As if his mistakes would hurt him in retrospect.
This is what it looked like on Sunday when Carlsen appeared in front of the camera for an official interview at the end of the prestigious chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee.
The world champion stood there with tousled hair, screwed up his eyes, frowned, took a deep breath and struggled for words.
"The overall performance was embarrassing," he said, "it was pretty bad." The result wasn't really that devastating: After beating Maxime Vachier-Lagrave on the last day, Carlsen had won 7.5 points and a total of three games.
A record that many grandmasters would be proud of.
But Magnus Carlsen found it just "terrible."
Carlsen is not one of many.
As a world champion, world number one and Elo record holder, he has played on a different level than his competitors in recent years.
He has higher demands on himself - especially since he has to defend his world title at the end of 2021.
In Wijk aan Zee he won more games than he lost.
But: "That is obviously not good enough by far," said Carlsen, who was actually - as in every tournament - the favorite.
But this time the 21-year-old Jorden van Foreest triumphed.
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Carlsen was last worse in 2009
How bad Carlsen's form is compared to his earlier performances, a look into the past shows: Carlsen has won the tournament in Wijk aan Zee, the so-called "Wimbledon of chess", seven times.
This time he was only sixth and scored fewer points than since 2009.
The low point was the defeat against 18-year-old Andrei Jessipenko.
In the world rankings, Carlsen lost 15 Elo points at once, more than seldom before.
The Elo number describes the skill level of a chess player.
Carlsen is under particular scrutiny after Wijk aan Zee's disappointment as it follows the best phase of his career so far.
Between 2018 and October 2020, the Norwegian had not lost 125 classic games in a row: a world record on the same level.
Carlsen seemed unbeatable, but then at the end of last year the weak phase slowly began to emerge.
He did not win three online tournaments in a row.
In December, the 30-year-old was kicked out of the quarter-finals of a digital rapid chess tournament.
Afterward, he tweeted: "After another breakdown, the bottom line is that I'm in a deep hole right now and it's really frustrating."
Carlsen's penchant for online chess
Because of the corona pandemic, Carlsen turned to online chess and organized his own digital tournament series.
Emil Sutovsky, Grandmaster and General Director of the World Chess Federation Fide, suspects this is a reason for Carlsen's weakness in form.
The quick and blitz games would have influenced Carlsen's game, he tweeted.
“Even his great endgame technique can't handle the newly acquired urge to make a move quickly.
In this rush he repeatedly misses victories or advantages. "
Sutovsky is not exactly known as a friend of online chess.
It is also questionable whether the competition - who recently also played more rapid chess - would not also be influenced by the trend.
It is possible, however, that Carlsen did not succeed in switching from rapid chess to classic, long games.
If that is the case, it could turn out to be a mistake that Carlsen wants to play more digital tournaments than classic tournaments before the World Cup.
Carlsen himself said that he "did not get off too well" in Wijk.
He made bad decisions in openings, the flow of the game was lacking and he made too many mistakes.
Now, compared to some of his direct competitors, Carlsen was never the big opening nerd.
At a young age he played aggressively, later he developed into an all-rounder and was referred to as a "boa constrictor" because he literally chokes his opponents on the board.
Carlsen tried to get his opponents off the hook early on in order to then slowly gain advantages that he could use to win in the final.
When Carlsen won the 2018 World Cup against Fabiano Caruana in the tie-break, it was obviously a signal for him.
He realized that he would have to change his playing style in order to remain successful.
Thanks to the inspiration of the AlphaZero chess program and his second Daniil Dubow, Carlsen realized that he could play more risky, with more piece sacrifices and new opening variants.
That resulted in a world record.
Now Carlsen may have heard a similar signal again.
If he wants to successfully defend his world title in Dubai in December, he has to find his way back to his old form or reinvent himself.
He has enough time for that, but until then he only wants to play a classic tournament.
Jan Gustafsson, a second Carlsen at the 2018 World Cup, once told SPIEGEL that the world champion is a very universal player and that it was easy for him to change his style.
So it is quite possible that a Magnus Carlsen will be sitting at the board with fresh ideas in December.
First of all, Carlsen's challenger must be determined anyway, in April the candidate tournament, which has been interrupted due to the corona, is to continue.
Grandmaster and candidate Alexander Grischuk, who watched Carlsen's games, indicated at "chess24" that the respect for Carlsen should continue to be great there.
"It's in terrible shape, worst shape in years," he said of Carlsen.
Nonetheless, his tournament record is positive: "That's why he's a great player, even in bad shape he's still very good."
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