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Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

On average players start declining in their mid to late thirties, just about the age of Magnus (and Hikaru). But even with that decline, it's not like they simply can't play anymore. Drag Kasparov out of retirement and he's still going to be an extremely strong player, even in his 60s.

And a lot probably comes with environmental rather than physical issues. Staying at the highest level in chess requires never-ending opening preparation and study. This same is about the time that kings of the game have made their dominance clear to the point that there's just nothing more to achieve, start having families, and so on. It's going to be very difficult to maintain motivation.

The rise of freestyle chess could viably see players extending their dominance for much longer, because there's currently believed to be no realistic way to do impactful opening prep in that game.

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I think motivation really is the key term here. Magnus is a five-time world chess champion, in a complete league of his own even when everyone else was literally only prepping to defeat him. He held the world champion title for ten years and eventually just declined to defend it. And that's relatable, if you're at the absolute top for ten years and no one manages to put a dent to it, what else is there? I think most people would look for new challenges and ways to fulfill themselves after that.

He declined to defend it because he disagreed with the way FIDE was organizing and managing the tournament. I believe this is around the time they threw him out of a tournament for wearing jeans, when he was not the only competitor present in jeans.

I think it's nearly universally accepted that his streak ended on a technicality rather than a legitimate decline/defeat.

From what I recall, he automatically lost that one game but was not thrown out of the tournament. Eventually he just stopped playing the world championship altogether, which is when he lost his title.

I don't really follow human chess, but I wonder what the new nr 1 player thought of themselves after essentially becoming the "best player in the world who doesn't wear jeans." Must be so frustrating to know there is something left to achieve but your league's shenanigans will prevent you from achieving it in an official and prestigious manner.

The jean controversy was a couple of years after Magnus stopped defending the title. It has nothing to do with it. Magnus just doesn't care about the format of the world title.

I think something broke for him while playing Caruana in 2018. The classical games were a snooze fest of defensive plays after defensive plays and everything was settled in the rapid tie break in a fairly unsatisfying manner.

He is not the first to complain about that by the way. Fischer hated the format too.

The freestyle championship was better in pretty much every way.

There was no snooze fest though in 2018 WCC. The games were extremely exciting, with unbalanced pawn structures. They all ended in draws only because of their strong defensive skills and a touch of luck in a few games.

Unbalanced pawn structure is a feature of the Sveshnikov Sicilian but Caruana had done a lot of prep and it was obvious. Carlsen quicky left the main line for the boring 7. Nd5. Plus, Carlsen missed a lot of good moves because he had to play it safe. To me, it was boring chess of the highest level.

A lot of it felt like watching engines by proxy. One prepared well on a very complex opening. The other found the best meta counterplay and held until he reached the tie break.

Game 12 is a travesty. It was clear he just wanted to move to rapid.

You are clearly confused. 1. It was Magnus who played Sveshnikov, and Fabi who played the 7. Nd5 line.

2. 7. Nd5 line is not boring, it's one of the sharpest things to play against Svehsnikov, with pawns marching on both sides of the board. Mainline Sveshnikov on the other hand can be very drawish, with maneuvering play, where no side has a pawn break in sight.

3. It was the beginning of the Leela era, with many new opening concepts. It was a short-lived golden age, with players excited to try new ideas. After this match Magnus had a second peak, incorporating new knowledge, and won quite a lot of sharp games in Sveshnikov.

4. Well, game 12 was interesting, but EV of extra time to relax and prepare for rapid games with Caruana in 2018 was quite high. Fabi wasn't a very good rapid/blitz player back then.

5. Carlsen-Nepo WCC was a massacre, while the games were quite boring, except a few at the beginning. That match or any of the next matches would be a much better example for a case against classical chess.

I myself quite like chess960, and it's clearly the right direction. Opening prep is absurd now, especially at super GM level.

In my experience many highly competitive people care mostly about the win itself, and less about the how.

But that's it. There was no win because the opportunity to even compete was taken away. Imagine you train your whole life and finally win the Olympic Gold medal, but everyone knows it's only because the true nr 1 ignored to compete in this format.

Winning a title is never about facing the greatest possible opponent. Even the people who show up aren’t at their absolute best, but consider everyone who doesn’t devote their lives to the sport. The greatest potential chess player of all time likely does something else with their lives.

Without prep Magnus would be vastly less likely to win, and he’s not doing the prep because he’s not competing. How exactly is that different than someone not devoting themselves to the sport 20 years ago?

Is it though? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You're making some pretty bold assumptions about competitive athlete psychology here.

I make no claims about what’s going on in people’s heads here just the underlying reality.

I was pissed I didn’t go to nationals in high school largely because I got no sleep the night before due to a crappy hotel stay. Losing a close game to board 1 while trying to stay awake sucked, but I was hardly the only person off my game, so that’s just how things workout.

Absolutely not. He refused to defend his classic title in April 2023, citing a lack of motivation for this format.

The "Jeans" controversy happened during the Rapid championship in December 2024, nearly two years after.

It's universally accepted that his streak Classic Championship ended because of his lack of motivation, not on technicalities.

Actually he recently stated that he IS still disappointed about that whole incident because nothing changed and is currently backing up hikaru on drama around similar issues.

The motivation issues can stem from poor management :)

I think it's more that he wanted to go out undefeated, rather than lacking motivation. Or rather the former driving the latter.

He made 5 title defenses. Two were against the previous generation of players, and he did extremely well. 2 were against players of his generation and were anything but compelling victories. He only won a total of 1 classical game in the 24 played, and that was in a must-win scenario because he had just lost for a final record in these matches of +1 -1 =22. And finally there was his match against Nepo which was looking to be another extremely close match until Nepo lost a critical game, and then went on monkey tilt, as is his reputation - proceeding to play horribly for the rest of the match and get wiped.

In an interview with Rogan, Carlsen stated he felt he peaked a bit before his match against Nepo, and so he probably did not view his chances of success in a world championship match as especially high. So he was going to have to spend months preparing for a match he could very well lose which would certainly tarnish his reputation as the GOAT of chess. I think this is why he couldn't find the motivation.

For instance there were new world records just around the corner. The most successful world title defenses is 6 and that was back in the early 20th century. With one more he could have surpassed Kasparov and at least tied the record.

Magnus has always been unhappy with the format of the WCC cycle. He first skipped it in 2011, when he was already the top-rated player but not yet champion (https://www.chess.com/news/view/carlsen-quits-world-champion...), and very nearly skipped it again in 2013.

This is plain wrong for anybody that has been actually following chess.

He said like a year before declining that he would only defend against Alireza because he was the younger generation. Nobody believed him, Alireza didn't win the Candidates and he said "no thanks" and then everybody was surprised pikachu.

The Jean thing was way later and in an unrelated event.

It's the ability to concentrate that starts to go.

Kasparov have talk about this. Older players can play at a world-class level for the first few hours, but their ability to maintain intense concentration declines as the game progresses. Most blunders by older GMs happen in the 5th or 6th hour of play. Older players also can't recover from earlier intense game next morning as well.

According to Kasparov older players get "calculation blackouts" and inability to visualize the board.

Can you link to the interview? Sounds interesting.

> The rise of freestyle chess could viably see players extending their dominance for much longer, because there's currently believed to be no realistic way to do impactful opening prep in that game.

For those out of the know like me, the tldr seems to be that it shuffles the positions in the first rank - symmetrically with your opponent, but not the usual rook/knight/bishop/royal both sides. So you can't study openings well because you don't even know the starting position.

https://www.freestyle-chess.com/fc-players-club-rules/

It goes to show my expertise in chess that I watched a whole encounter and it looked exactly the same as regular chess with castling and all.

I don't know if I would call the positions symmetrical, though, they seem mirrored(I just checked and regular chess is mirrored as well).

I've only had the one coffee, but surely mirroring is symmetry in the plane of the mirror? Anyway, yes, that's what I meant - you have the same order each, so neither disadvantaged, it's just not the usual order.

Vishy's still a top player at 56

He does not play classical because it would immediately reduce his rating. Gelfand plunged. He would too.

Yes the stamina needed to play classical tournaments is not as there anymore, but he's still very very strong. He just came in second at Tata Steel Rapid, which although is not classical, is still an indication of strength, albeit without the emphasis on endurance.

Yeah, I think the motivation angle is hugely underrated. At that level everyone is already insanely strong, so the difference often comes down to who's still willing to grind 6-8 hours a day on prep for marginal gains

For example, Anand did very well in a recent rapid and blitz event amongst youngsters. But Anand was drubbed by Kasparov in a recent Freestyle event.

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