A Man in a Hurry

With the victory in the World Chess Cup 2023, Magnus Carlsen has won everything it was possible for him to win in a lifetime, elevating to a position of strength that quite possibly will get him and his entourage to dictate the agenda to FIDE. His thought can pretty much be summed up in one GIF posted on his last “X-File” of the day: “Chess? Completed it”. Yet, in other ways, he expressed his position more argumentatively in an interview for his own chess24.com platform. When asked what could possibly induce him to re-enter the FIDE World Championship cycle, he answered: “The one non-negotiable point for me, if I were to play the World Championship again, is that there would have to be more games and shorter time controls. I think specifically two games in a day is very, very interesting, and then time control could be for instance an hour per player with some increment at some point. So with the classical time control I think there’s just no way that I’m going to return to the World Championship”. Photo: Stev Bonhage/FIDE.