Carlsen’s Crisis

Although Magnus Carlsen remains by far the most dominant player on the international circuit, the World Champion is facing a crisis. Maybe this has been brought on by distractions over his imbroglio concerning alleged cheating, involving the American teenage grandmaster, Hans Niemann. (Niemann has now brought a $400 million lawsuit against his accusers, as this column predicted he would, and is suing Carlsen himself personally for $100 million.)

Alternatively, the World Champion’s recent setbacks may be a function of indulging in too much chess. Whether he has been suffering from an attack of overconfidence, such as afflicted Alexander Alekhine after his glorious run of victories from 1927-1934, remains an open question. Suffice it to say that Carlsen has uncharacteristically crashed and burned in no fewer than ten games recently. Ominously for him, all these losses were against teenage opponents — on average a full 13 years younger than the champion. In addition, he has lost a recent mini-match to Jan Krzysztof Duda, the talented Polish 24 year old: hardly a teenager but still something of a spring chicken compared to Carlsen. Is the writing on the wall?

As I have previously indicated in this column, the former World chess champion Vassily Smyslov once published an anthology of his chessboard masterpieces entitled: In Search of Harmony — a volume, by the way, in which I figure as one of the great man’s victims. Chess is an arena of human endeavour which, in common with mathematics and music, allows child prodigies to demonstrate astounding genius. I am convinced that the ability, even of the very young, to tap into some kind of cosmic harmony is the key.

Consider the young Mozart. Among so many other precocious musical achievements, such as composing his Minuet and Trio in G Major aged five, he was able to reconstruct and transcribe Allegri’s Miserere from memory, having heard the closely guarded score just once during a visit to the Vatican. It should be recalled that at the age of 14, Mozart also wrote his first opera: Mitridate Re di Ponto, or “Mithridates, King of Pontus”.

In mathematics astounding precocity was displayed by, for example, Ruth Lawrence, who graduated from Oxford University aged 13 with a starred first class Honours Degree — not to mention John Nunn, who went up to Oxford at the age of 15 to pursue his mathematical studies. Nunn, who also distinguished himself as a chess-playing prodigy, went on to become a grandmaster and professional player, who numbered even the legendary Anatoly Karpov amongst his scalps.

Indeed, accounts abound of amazingly youthful chess prodigies, including José Raul Capablanca, who allegedly picked up the moves of the game aged four, simply by watching his father play. Then there was Paul Morphy who at 13 defeated the illustrious European master Löwenthal, and perhaps most spectacular of all, Bobby Fischer, US champion at the age of 14 and victor of the so-called Game of the Century when he was 13.

It seems to me and many others that there must be some quality which links chess, music and mathematics. I believe that quality to be an inner harmony, which connects all three activities and which even the pre-teenage human brain is capable of identifying. The striking factor is that prodigies in chess, music and mathematics are capable of performing at the highest level without significant prior human experience.

It would be unthinkable , for example, for a child or young teenager to paint like Leonardo da Vinci or write with the depth and passion of Tolstoy or Shakespeare, since the relative life experience would not yet have been accumulated . In general, such dimensions would be missing. For music, maths and chess, on the other hand, the prodigies appear to be able to leap the chasm of experience and tap directly into an underlying harmony, a harmony which most of us cannot easily perceive.

As far as music and chess are concerned, it is worth noting that Smyslov (World Chess Champion 1957-1958) was also an accomplished opera singer. Meanwhile, the Soviet grandmaster Mark Taimanov enjoyed a highly successful second career as a concert pianist.

With the advent of computers, such as Demis Hassabis’ Alpha Zero, new dimensions of harmony are now constantly being revealed. At first sight, or to the uninitiated, the moves and strategies of Alpha Zero may appear opaque. Queens moved to fantastically improbable attacking squares, such as h1, at the rearwards furthest extremity of the board, or sacrifices are made for no apparent immediate compensation. Yet Magnus Carlsen has carried out a deep study of the program’s games and drawn advantageous conclusions for his own strategies.

Harmony is there in the data,  and if the World Champion has located it, so now have his younger rivals.

Magnus Carlsen vs. Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa

Arjun Erigaisi vs. Magnus Carlsen

Carlsen succumbed to the youngest player to ever beat him this week. Commenting on the Chess24 website, International Master Lawrence Trent commented, “He’s a man who, let’s put it this way, he doesn’t like to lose, so he’s going to have to regroup quite quickly.”

Carlsen, playing from a log cabin in northern Sweden, spent five minutes thinking about his losing move after realising his mistake. He was shaking his head, gesticulating and spinning on his chair. Clearly, he was angry with himself. A few moves later, he resigned. Dommaraju Gukesh is only 16 years old.

“I was really disappointed because I’d seen an easy way to win, but I thought I’d seen something even easier, but I hadn’t seen his threat of trapping the queen in the middle of the board,” Carlsen said afterwards.

Former Reuters chess correspondent, Adam Black, drew parallels between Carlsen’s increasingly erratic behaviours and former world chess champion, Bobby Fischer’s: “Not only has the World Champion declined to defend his title, but his strong disposition to play faster time limit games and to prefer openings wildly at variance with mainstream theory, remind one of Fischer’s project to play with shuffled back-rank pieces, Chess360. Fischer was paranoid about the dominance of the then Soviet ‘chess machine’, developing openings in concert that would be used against him. Carlsen seems to be exhibiting a similar apprehension at playing classical over-the-board games against increasingly well computer-prepared young talent.”

Carlsen’s craving for the offbeat caused a remarkable reaction in one game last week, when Rauf Mamedov, the Armenian Grandmaster, playing as White, resigned to Carlsen, after 1 e4 g5. He apparently felt insulted by Black’s offbeat first move. Thus Mamedov dealt a dose of his own medicine to the champion, who had previously resigned to Hans Niemann after just two moves. This gesture was in relation to Niemann’s alleged,  but still unproven cheating. I am afraid that I cannot sympathise with Mamedov’s bruised feelings in this case. If …g5 is inferior, it behoves the opponent to refute it, not to walk off in a huff.

Here is Carlsen’s disaster against Gukesh:

Dommaraju Gukesh vs. Magnus Carlsen

Some time ago, the Praeceptor Britanniae, Julian Simpole, and I were able to assist the family of another bright young talent, Shreyas Royal, to navigate their pathway through the UK visa entry systems. We have just been informed by the family that Shreyas (Elo rated 2438) has fulfilled all the requirements to claim his IM (International Master)  title at age of 13. Our sincerest congratulations go out to him. Shreyas, like Ramesh, Pragg, Arjun and Gukesh, is of Indian origin. Perhaps, borne on the wings of such prodigies, chess is, in the football analogy, “coming home” to India, the land of its origins.

Julian Simpole ’ s  Junior Chess Training,   the manual he used to help Shreyas on the path to rapid improvement, is available from   Waterstones.com

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