A In the end it was over very quickly: In the 55th move of the last of 14 games, the defending champion Ding Liren squandered a sure draw — yes, what was that exactly? A lapse? A simple brain blur, a crack in concentration, a lapse, something that should not happen even to a mediocre player like me?
A tribute to the incredibly exhausting games beforehand, which, as Ding Liren himself said, had been nothing less than an ordeal from day two onward. In stark contrast to his opponent Gukesh, an 18-year-old who, even in seemingly hopeless, balanced positions, still played a few moves simply because, as he said, he enjoyed playing chess so much; yet after his last move he burst into tears, tears that were probably not only of joy but also of relief.
There was a lot of grumbling about the level of the games, various top players feeling compelled to express disdain that the quality of some moves in a World Championship was not up to standard, Magnus Carlsen for example or American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura. Objectively speaking, that is wrong: A data analysis by chess scientist Mehmet Ismail concludes that this match was the most precise since the World Championship 1995, that legendary encounter between Garry Kasparov and Viswanathan Anand at the World Trade Center.
Why this was not recognized by many commentators probably lies in the fact that everyone agrees: In this World Championship contest, the strongest player in contemporary chess was not crowned; that honor, to date, still belongs to Magnus Carlsen.
The Absence of the Best
But that very Magnus Carlsen had declined to participate in the last two World Championships because he found the format too exhausting. In the run-up to the last World Championship he tried to introduce new formats into the competition: shorter formats, which, in his view, are more entertaining and contemporary. When FIDE refused, he walked away undefeated and now comments snidely from the background.
Admittedly this is a very valid reason to say: this is simply too much, this torment, the months-long preparation, the total isolation during the matches, the brain taxed for days on end to the point of burnout. It is too much, although FIDE has already made concessions: The 1984 World Championship duel between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov stretched over half a year and 48 games and was still terminated early. That is not an argument: that it was crazier in the past does not mean it has to be like that today.
It is also exhausting enough: Even in this World Championship, with every progressing game one could see how this cursed board with the pieces on it gradually sucked the life out of the competitors. And not only from the two at the board: to some extent this also applies to the spectators, who — unlike in physically active sports — do not play, but do think along, calculate, and empathize.
In my life as a sports fan I have never encountered an event capable of pulling me away in such a way. It has something mystical; not the game itself, which is bound to endure a lot of hyperbole, but precisely this format, which Carlsen considers to be out of date. Yet this is his great magic: it allows a person to fall out of time.
In that sense, it also has something cathartic about watching one of the best players in the world, who just two games earlier had conjured a flawless game from start to finish, lose because of a move that even a mere chess amateur like me would immediately recognize as a mistake. It is sad, but in a strange way also beautiful.
