Carlsen rows back

Magnus Carlsen has announced that he is relinquishing the throne on World Chess Day (July 20), as recognized by the United Nations.

His decision can cause enormous damage to the sport that has made him famous and a millionaire, just when it is fashionable in much of the world due to the sum of four main factors: the confinements, the success of the

series , its great potential as an educational tool and its usefulness in delaying brain aging and Alzheimer's.

One wonders if the Norwegian is breaching a moral responsibility.

“Staying at the top is harder than getting there because you compete against the feeling that you have already achieved your life goal.

Staying motivated after climbing the Olympus of chess is like climbing Everest twice (or better six).

Humans need reasons", explains Gari Kasparov in a tweet a few hours after Carlsen's resignation, who will no longer be able to match one of Kasparov's two greatest marks: remaining undefeated for seven consecutive duels for the title (the Scandinavian has five) .

The other is still possible, but stratospheric: to be

for twenty years in a row (1985-2005), until his retirement;

Carlsen has ten or eleven since January 2010, depending on how you rate him dropping to number two in November 2010, and March and May 2011.

Those reasons indicated by Kasparov elevate him as the champion who has contributed the most to the popularity of chess, during a quarter of a century in the elite, and also later, after his retirement.

He made serious mistakes;

the biggest, causing a schism in 1993 by breaking away from the International Chess Federation (then very corrupt and ineffective, but necessary).

However, the exploits of the Russian born in Azerbaijan weigh more: he had the greatest rivalry in the history of all individual sports with Anatoli Karpov;

he took the banner of humans against computers in his duels against Deep Blue (IBM), which were universal front-page news;

he wrote

a monumental work about all the world champions;

and he always fought - he still does - for the popularity of chess as a sport, as well as its important educational, social and therapeutic applications.

It is fair to recognize that Carlsen has not had a rival comparable to what Karpov was to Kasparov.

And also that he made a difficult, risky and very useful decision for the public interest a few weeks after the outbreak of the pandemic, in April 2020: Chess24, one of the companies in his group, Play Magnus, promoted a circuit of rapid tournaments for internet when much of the world was homebound.

It is therefore true, as FIDE president Arkady Dvorkovich indicated in his statement on Wednesday, that the Norwegian has contributed to making chess fashionable.

It's also understandable that, as a human being, you find it very hard to spend several months every couple of years preparing against a single opponent, with the added pressure that comes with a title matchup.

Although it should be clarified that this obligation has made him a millionaire, and a great privileged person when compared to the vast majority of human beings, who must go to work every day in something that they are not passionate about in order to earn a living.

On the other hand, it is also true that since 2018 he has been calling for a change in the World Cup format.

And he is right to do so: the enormous influence of training with computers that calculate millions of moves per second means that games at the highest level tend to be boring for the average fan, and do not serve to attract new followers.

Carlsen, during a game against Niepómniashi during the Dubai World Cup, in December 2021ERIC ROSEN

But the most recent information allows us to deduce that Carlsen's decision is not consistent with his own convictions.

He himself acknowledges in his communication that FIDE has made him proposals that he likes, which can only mean some mixture of slow games with other fast ones.

One that Carlsen would welcome is the one that has been successfully experienced precisely in Stavanger (Norway), in the elite Norway Chess tournament: every draw game is immediately followed by

called

: ten minutes for the white player, forced to win, and seven for the black player.

To questions from EL PAÍS, neither FIDE nor Carlsen's father and representative, Henrik, have denied (although they have not confirmed either) that Dvorkovich made that proposal at the Madrid meeting two weeks ago.

That is to say, FIDE, a very conservative and very slow progressing body, has most likely offered Carlsen the most innovative, and the champion has rejected it.

The consequences will be serious.

The duel between Niepómniashi and Liren Ding cannot be played in Russia due to sanctions, and it is doubtful that it will be played in China under the zero covid policy of that government.

In any case, it will have a much lower diffusion than one with Carlsen, who will therefore appear much less in the press because the World Cup is the most striking showcase for talking about chess on all continents.

It would not be strange if, in two years, Carlsen decides to regain the throne, because that will motivate him.

But two years is a precious time when the chess world must take advantage of the MOMENT, with capital letters, which may be short-lived if it is not done well.

In his interview with EL PAÍS last November in Dubai, Carlsen stressed that the current world does not encourage thinking.

And he explained it like this: “I mean the rush, the misuse of social networks, the number of messages that come to you everywhere and that you are supposed to answer... I couldn't agree more with that idea. .

And I think that more and more people are concerned about the misuse of new technologies.

In that context, it is obvious that chess can be very useful.”

One of the instruments that chess has for the great objective of teaching how to think while playing is the repercussion of the World Championship every two years.

All oarsmen on that boat must row in the same direction.

But suddenly it turns out that the boss does it backwards.

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