Magnus Carlsen Wins the Freestyle (Chess960) World Championship
fide.com231 points by prophylaxis 9 hours ago
231 points by prophylaxis 9 hours ago
How long do chess players typically remain at their peak for? According to wikipedia, Magnus is currently 35. Is it impressive to be winning at 35? Would we expect to see his performance drop off in the next 5-10 years?
Even if he is still capable mentally and physically, I would think the stress of training and competing at that level must get old after a while.
I think the question is different for the typical chess player compared to those at the very top. And at the very top we don't have that much data... going back to Fischer, he had a short career and disappeared by 32, but not really for lack of ability. For Karpov, his reign lasted about 10 years from age 24-34, but even after that he was in the top 3 or top 5 for another 15 years until he retired in his 50s. Kasparov reigned for 20 years, retiring at the top at age 41, and is maybe most impressive for defeating his same-generation rival Karpov while also holding the newcomers of Kramnik and Anand at bay. With Kasparov gone those two battled at the top for another 10ish years into their late 30s and mid-40s respectively (and I'd give the edge to the older Anand) before Magnus won the championship in 2013 and has been dominating for 13 years since. So to summarize, I don't think it's that "impressive" to still be winning at 35, he can probably keep winning for quite some time to come. He probably won't surpass his peak ELO though.
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.
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.
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.
Anand reached world #1 ranking at 38, managed to win a world championship and defend the title for a decade in his late 40s, and remains in #13 in his 50s right now.
Top players who stay active tend to stay above 2600 for a long time. Short was continually active and while not at his peak was in the top 100 well into his fifties. Mickey Adams is still in the top 100 at 54. Korchnoi was world class into his 70s. Vasyl Ivanchuk, at 56, nearly won Tata Steel Challengers. If a player falls off hard in their fifties it’s generally in part “not wanting to try as hard”.
If you don’t play your rating stays the same. Pretty common for inactive 2600+ players.
Kasparov remained the n.1 player until his retirement at 42, we can likely expect no less from Magnus
Magnus is in uncharted territory here. We won't really know the answer to this question for quite some time.
Is there really a decline with age when it comes to chess? I’m not sure he will really decline until he reaches his retirement age.
For some concrete numbers, there are only four players over 50 years of age in the top 100 at the moment by live ratings[0]. They are ranked #13 (age 56), #89 (age 53), #95 (age 54), and #97 (age 57). In their primes these players were ranked #1, #10, #4, and #3 respectively.
Isn't he playing Chess960 because he started finding standard chess boring? And wasn't that why Fischer worked on it in the first place? Experts might get bored of it by the time they're 50.
The reason the top pros like chess960 is because they don’t need to spend hundreds of hours of opening preparation, they can just sit down and play.
Caruana (the guy who lost to Magnus), mused in a podcast that chess960 feels strange as a competitor because he doesn’t really prepare (because there are far too many openings to study) and said it feels like he’s getting paid for much less work.
There are 960 possible starting positions and the chosen one is known at the start of the tournament where players are given 15m to prepare. I have observed that GMs aren't surprised when they see the board. They usually go "ah it's this one with the opposite bishops" or something similar.
When a chess player means "no prep" it probably still means more prep than any normal person would consider reasonable, because what would require you to sit down and take notes, move pieces and memorize, they can just do in their head getting coffee by now. So yeah they recognize almost all the patterns, it's just harder justify spending 1 month on an opening you won't even be able to use, but they still know how to play certain patterns.
There's a sharp decline with age. Magnus himself says he's not as sharp as he was younger, even if he can compensate with experience.
There are a lot of confounding variables. Chief among them is someone at the top just wanting to get on with their life, start a family for instance, or basically anything other than study 12 hours a day.
It's hard to say it's cognitive decline for most of the people who just aren't working as hard at 40 as they were at 25.
For most people there is a cognitive decline with age, and chess is clearly a cognitive effort. Like with everything else: experience really matters, but you will simply be a bit less sharp over time and in a game where a tiny mistake can compound to a loss it really matters.
Magnus' longevity has more to do with his willingness to continue competing than his actual skill. He's been pretty vocal about his issues with FIDE so I can see a world where he stops participating in FIDE events to focus on non-FIDE events that he enjoys more. He's already withdrawn from the Candidates which qualifies you for the World Championship.
Magnus not participating in FIDE events seems to have absolutely nothing to do with his longevity, it just means that FIDE is no longer meaningfully hosting THE world championship because they failed to attract the talent.
Yeah if FIDE crowns some other champ without Magnus people wont think oh wow Magnus lost the spot, people will think oh wow FIDE lost the spot of being the kingmaker. chess.com is probably the more credible org for global rankings anyway
You know that he already has stopped participating in the world championship organized by FIDE, right? The current 'world champion' is Gukesh Dommaraju, who took it from Ding Liren the year before, but of course Magnus would probably still be the world champion if he kept competing for it.
I think the point the poster was making, is that there is an asterisk beside Gukesh and Liren's world champ status. Nobody really thinks they're the actual world-champ, regardless of what FIDE says. FIDE failed to attract the best player, to even play.
> Is it impressive to be winning at 35?
No. Multiple world champions have been older than that.
Context helps. A lot of really strong players are 12 years old.
The best young player today, by a wide margin, is Erdogmus. [1] He's not only the youngest grandmaster in the world, but showing an arguably unprecedented level of talent. He's 14 and his rating is 2669. Magnus is 2840. Chess ratings are difficult to explain, even to chess players - who might not appreciate how much harder improvement becomes at higher levels.
Suffice to say that 50 points is considered a major edge, and it increases exponentially so 100 points is much more of an edge than 2x a 50 point edge. Here [2] is a rating expectation calculator. If Erdogmus and Carlsen played a best of 10 match, Carlsen would be expected to win 97% of the time, draw 2% of the time, and lose less than 1% of the time.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ya%C4%9F%C4%B1z_Kaan_Erdo%C4%9...
[2] - https://wismuth.com/elo/calculator.html#rating1=2669&rating2...
He was not the youngest GM. But youngest to achieve 2600 rating. Point increse would not be so hard for him as he already can beat top 20 players.
That context doesn't help me at all. Is a "really strong" 12yo in contention to win this particular competition that a 35yo won?
No, even the best prodigies typically aren't winning super tournaments until 17 or 18, and we haven't really had one of those since Gukesh won candidates last cycle. The youngest player in this event was a 20 year old who placed last. (Though to be fair to the youngsters, 3rd and 4th place are both 21 years old.)
Generally speaking it's expected that chess players will peak around their late 20s and slowly decline from there, with sharp declines around age 50. It's unusual but not unheard of for players in their 40s to win major tournaments. 42 year old Levon Aronian won several last year, but it was considered a notable example of longevity every time he won.
In terms of raw numbers, there are currently 30 players in their 30s, 15 players in their 40s, 4 players in their 50s, and no players older that in the top 100. The youngest is 14-year old Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus, who is considered the greatest chess prospect of all time.
Sorry, I thought you’d be able to make some logical inferences and I assumed you knew a little about chess.
In chess there’s a concept of strength, and ELO is used as a rough estimate of this. Further there are FIDE rankings like IM and GM that have certain requirements to achieve.
In most sports, there’s never such an age gap. Think of basketball or football. You don’t see 12 year olds hitting the equivalent of GM in those respective sports (going pro?) and being able to compete with the 35 year olds, do you? In most sports, they wouldn’t even be allowed to enter but in chess they could.
Obviously a board game will be easier for a child to compete at than a physical sport. Tons of Rubik's cube world records are held by 9 year olds. I don't see why any of this is relevant in answering the question "is it impressive to be winning at 35 in chess?"
Is your point that young kids have an advantage in chess, making it harder to keep up as an adult? They clearly don't. No 12 year old has ever been able to seriously compete with top players, at best they can hold a few draws or win a blitz game here and there. As far as I'm aware Judit Polgar was the only 12 year old to even break into the top 100, and she's an outlier among outliers. Right now the top 3 players in the world are all in their 30s, and there's only one player in the top 50 who's younger than 18.
Chess isn't like most sports so it's hard to extrapolate from them. The existence of ELO in and of itself doesn't help explain whether the super youngs are competitive at the highest levels unless you are saying they should be manually looked up, and you didn't say any of that so it's ridiculous to treat that like it was implicit or an obvious logical inference.
And they were right that "a lot of really strong players are 12 years old" doesn't by itself help clarify where they are relative to elite competition at other age bands let alone clarify what age band perform bests at the end of the day. Even now I still don't understand how "a lot of 12 year old are good" is to supposed to answer that even implicitly. If anything the natural reading of that would be an implication that they are among the most competitive, yet your elaboration says the opposite.
You have still failed to clarify whatever the hell you were attempting to communicate, all you’ve communicated is that you’re an asshole
There have only been 4 12 year old GMs in history, and none of them are competitive with Carlsen.
There's a lot more wrong with your comment that someone capable of making logical inferences can readily see, so I won't go into them.
> the stress of training and competing at that level must get old after a while.
The stress of elite competition clearly has a shelf life, but Magnus is not overly old. Cognitive performance typically hits a plateau at 35 years old and begins a sustained decline after 45 years old.
The current youth wave of GMs is likely a function of compressed training efficiency. Modern players reach the 10,000 hours threshold much earlier because they had greater access to better training material and had better practice.
The youth wave of GMs is also going to be driven by a general increase in the popularity and image of chess. There's probably way more parents competently teaching their children chess than there have ever been. This may be playing an even bigger role than the training itself. For instance Gukesh's coach was actively running an experiment on him, and as a result he did not use engines in his training until he was already 2500+.
George Sheldrick wrote an important program at the age of 75. He chose not to follow a chess career as a young man, but he could have.
The most devastating fact of life is that physical (and mental) performance drops off at around mid 30s. Hakuho, by far the greatest sumo wrestler in history, retired at 38 when he should have retired years earlier.
You... should watch him stream. That'll pretty much answer your questions. Age is far less relevant to chess compared to keeping up with the current "meta" (in gamer parlance).
It feels like the cohort GM player pool is mentally cooked against Magnus.
Youngsters like Lazavik during the Speed Chess Championship or Sindarov in Freestyle were the most recent convincing wins against Magnus, but the historical mental edge that Magnus comes into each game after beating the brakes out of everyone is hard to overcome.
Magnus' time will come! But not today.
I don't think it's merely mental albeit it seems like even nervous Carlsen is cooler than his very focused opponents (see game 3 vs Fabiano where caruana had a completely winning position after carlsens blunder).
Carlsen has spent the core of his career mastering two aspects historically underlooked aspects of the game.
The first is the endgame, and there isn't much to say there. He's by far the best end game player by far and it's not even close.
The second are drawish locked positions where most GMs can't but see a draw. Carlsen realized that in order for it to be a draw his opponents still have to play perfect and he focused a lot on accumulating small but convincing advantages in those kind of games.
Another thing that should not be overlook: mental strength, like you point out.
They had a heart rate monitor at one of the freestyle events which physically affirms what you're saying here. Carlsen's heart rate was barely above resting while his opponents were invariably like they were running a marathon. Even when he was losing, he remained calmer than when his opponents were in normal positions.
I think that should be a normal part of chess competition. It provides some really interesting metadata for spectators. To some degree it also emphasizes the importance of something people don't normally associate with chess - physical conditioning. When your heart is pounding for hours and the cortisol flowing, you literally get physically exhausted.
IMHO a huge aspect of Carlsen mental strength isn't just the focused, at-the-game part, but we just see him enjoying Chess in many angles: not only he plays all styles, he streams relaxed, he plays Lichess and Chess.com; Chess is not only his job and passion, but it seems that he's also able to relax while engaging with it.
The only top-athlete that I see do the same is Max Verstappen, who is know to play competitive racing-sims online even hours before a real F1 race.
Magnus has streamed playing chess while drunk, in a party/loud atmosphere, and had some very fun and exciting games. He's a blast.
Carlsen has always had a tenacity that allows him to come back from positions other players would give up on thinking to conserve effort to fight another day. Mental strength and stamina to stay in the fight has always been something that made him who he is.
You also can't underestimate physical stamina. Kasparov in his 5-3 result against Karpov in 1984-85 was eventually halted due to Karpov's exhaustion and losing 18kg over the match period.
> losing 18kg over the match period.
woah that's crazy, I was not aware of this. That's like 36 weeks of aggressive weight loss.
edit: Looks like it lasted 5 months (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1984%...).
We often think of chess as something you "learn" how to do. But players like Magnus are evidence that there's really some neurological "muscle" for chess which some people just have naturally more of than others. The way in which Magnus has just so obviously been so much better than every other player in the world for over 15 years now, to the point of becoming bored and refusing to continue competing in the classical World Championships, speaks volumes.
He doesn't play the classical championship anymore because it's 6+ months of daily hard work to prepare for it and he's already won it 5 times.
Same exact thing happened in tennis. There was a whole "lost generation" of amazingly talented players who just basically shat the bed whenever they stepped onto the court with Djokovic, Federer, or Nadal. It wasn't until much younger players like Alcaraz and Sinner came on the scene, who weren't quite as overpowered by the aura of the Big 3, that the playing field finally leveled. (And now they themeselves are turning into those guys for everyone else, haha.)
Quite chuffed someone else mentioned Djokovic, who is close to 39 and just played an Australian Open final. (Yes he got lucky with 2 freebies but he _did_ beat Sinner in the semifinal fair and square, and managed to win the first set before running out of juice)
Or maybe the “lost generation” was simply not as good as Djokovic, Federer, or Nadal.
Chess ability seems distributed in a power law, rather than any sort of a normal distribution. There are repeatedly, throughout history, players that are just much better than everybody else, including the 2nd best player in the world. Lasker, for instance, was world champion for 26 consecutive years while also regularly dominating tournaments during that period as well. Kasparov was #1 for 21 years, and so on.
I'd go further to say I think this is true in many things. For instance if you're into wrestling, you know the name of Alexander Karelin [1] who ended his career with a record of 887 wins and 2 losses (both losses by a single point and both highly controversial). He was winning olympic gold, repeatedly, not only without a single defeat but without his opponents even scoring a single point against him. His ears tell the story - 889 world class matches, and he doesn't even have cauliflower ear.
> Magnus' time will come! But not today.
Hasn't Magnus' time already come, and isn't it still Magnus' time? He is #1 on all three lists[1] and so long that I have forgotten when he was not.
Are you referring to the odd individual game? Magnus beat Lazavik pretty badly in the SCC and knocked Sindarov out of the Freestyle final.
Individual games.
The ones that specifically come to mind are Lazavik vs. Carlsen, Speed Chess Championship 2025 Semi-Final, Round 3, and Sindarov vs. Carlsen, Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Finals 2025 in South Africa, Round 1 of the Group Stage Finals.
I assume you mean that beautiful tactical shot Lazavik found? In general these sort of games are the opposite of convincing. The reason is that we're all human and make tactical mistakes now and again, even more so in very rapid time controls. What generally defines players overall edge though is the ability to grind small edges, rather than stumble into knock-out blows.
For instance this is why Carlsen was so crushed by his loss to Niemann in 2022 (that led to the cheating claim controversy). Niemann actively avoided a draw and then systematically outplayed Magnus in a very difficult R+N v R+B ending. This is also why players like Erdogmus seem to have so much potential. It's not the tactics - which is basically a prerequisite to high level play, but his ability to just systematically grind down extremely strong players like MVL.
or maybe he's just very good?
Agree you don't have to overcomplicate it. Magnus is a generational talent.
I would almost say “generational” is underselling it. Gretzky might be the only competitor that’s even comparable in terms of dominance.
Brain ages. He will eventually decline just like any human being. Let's hope by then he will have the wisdom to smile when that happens.
Ageism also just one of these shitty unproven biases, like sexism, which is self-realizing by applying pressure to people who fall out of the mold even slightly.
He's 30 something, not 90.
It's not unproven, there's ample literature and research on the fact.
Besides, the age pool of chess itself confirms it.
There's a single player in his 50s in the top 50 of chess and not a single 60+ in the top 100.
Also, even carlsen himself says he's no longer as good as he was years before and his mind isn't as strong.
Regarding sexism; most tournaments in Chess (including the world championship) are fully open and are thus gender netral: anyone can participate regardless of sex/gender and will compete on equal footing.
Women only categories have been created to give women visibility because they mostly were not able to reach advanced levels in the open format.
Some women choose to compete with men (Judit Polgár being a somewhat recent example) but most go straight to the women only tournaments to have a shot.
The men vs women « bias » is not unproven, they litterally had to create entire categories of competiton to account for it.
Cognition certainly declines with age at the population level. See e.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4906299/.
yes but he's 30 not 90, and knowledge and experience continues to accumulate through life, which can certainly compensate
The decline starts in your early thirties, and those who are pushing their cognition to its limit are the first to notice.
If the skill you need to select for is tactical combinatorics, then Chess dominance as a function of age would seem to support the premise of ageism.
What ageism ignores is that outside of chess, prescience outperforms other measures of productivity.
> Ageism also just one of these shitty unproven biases
You might be right, if we were talking about anything except chess.
Chess, unlike everything else, has a clear ranking system and lots of records for people to analyze. And unfortunately, the record is very clear: chess ability decreases after a certain age.
However, the decrease is more likely due to stamina than mental decline. Chess tournaments take a long time, and stamina definitely decreases with age. However, pro athletes demonstrate that you can probably go until around your early 40s before it becomes a real issue.
Having said that, it will be interesting to see how this generation does in the blitz formats as they age. Those will be less dependent upon stamina and a better measure of mental acuity for chess.
Here are the replays https://lichess.org/broadcast/fide-freestyle-chess-world-cha...
When I clicked one of the game, the initial position is wrong. I clicked another game and it was wrong as well. Am i wrong?
>Chess960, also known as Fischer Random Chess, is a chess variant that randomizes the starting position of the pieces on the back rank to eliminate memorized opening theory and emphasize creativity from move one.
Fabi a bridesmaid again. The curse of being born in Magnus' generation.
It's like being a contender in the Jordan age, but this is arguably worse because of Carlson's longevity.
The last match was crazy. It looked so ,,easy win'' for Fabi after Magnus's blunder that I was just fast tracking it as I was sure Magnus has no chance (especially while looking at the eval bar).
I feel sorry for Fabi not winning it, but of course there can be only one winner.
Magnus is just so tenacious. From a lost position he snatched a victory. Take a look at the five hour mark (plus or minus) for the crucial moments of the key game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6ey5Up4S7w
How many calories has he burned playing chess?
I think Nakamura didnt play this time because of his Candidates prep. Otherwise I think Nakamura would have a slight edge on Carlsen in this game.
Hikaru is either in a slump or his skill is starting to age: hasn't won Titled Tuesday since November, hasn't won Freestyle Friday this year, came last in Speed Chess Championship, etc.
We'll see how well he does in Candidates this year to see if he's still a top contender. Although I do believe this is his last chance to fight for the world title.
To be clear, "came last in Speed Chess Championship" actually means he came in 4th out of 16. He still made it to the semifinals. Even then he barely lost to Alireza, who is pretty universally considered a top 3 speed chess player. The loss to Lazavik was a lot worse, but it was still a close match against a strong player. He hasn't won a Titled Tuesday this year but he hasn't scored worse than 8/11 and he's still made the top 10. That's not as much of a slump as you imply IMO.
Sure he's still one of the top players, but he's not as strong this year and OP is suggesting he still has an edge against the GOAT, who this year:
- Has won Freestyle WC
- Has won SCC
- Has won 2x Titled Tuesday's
- Has won a Freestyle Friday
Hikaru can snipe a win off Magnus here and there, but I don't think there's any time control or format where he could win a long series of chess matches against Magnus.
It isn't a slump at all, really. He had his first kid in December. He's preparing for the Candidates in March. Weekly chess.com tournaments are just, you know, going to be relegated to streaming content for a bit.
Candidates prep and also the entire Freestyle chess experiment has been a bit of a mess. Here's what he told chess.com[0]:
A few months ago I was invited to the first leg of the 2026 Freestyle Tour with the same format and prize fund. I let everyone know that I'd be playing there.
Just a few days ago I received news that there will be no year-long tour for Freestyle. The format for the only event to be held will be only three days and only rapid formats. Instead of the tour that was planned, Freestyle has joined forces with FIDE and are now calling it a World Championship. I think it might hold the record for most rushed arrangement for a World Championship title in history.
I truly enjoyed the first event in Weissenhaus in 2025, and it's a shame that the classical length format wasn't continued. Furthermore, this all feels like a hastily arranged tournament with less than 1/3rd the prize fund it originally had, and now it's attached to FIDE, which isn't a positive development in my opinion.
Despite many phone calls and messages from the organizer, I have decided to decline my slot in this event. I have an important tournament in the end of March/April to focus on, and that is where my attention will be.
[0] https://www.chess.com/news/view/freestyle-chess-fide-world-c...
It's a very short, 3 day event: You have Fabi sitting right there in second place, and I don't think anyone is more focused on the candidates than he is.
Hikaru is getting older too, and it shows: I don't think he has a freestyle edge at all.
I think it's because he has a young child too. But I don't think there's an edge.
Do the engines have a similar edge in Fischer Random and regular chess?
I'd expect them to have a larger edge in chess960 because humans can't prep openings like in regular chess.
Do modern chess AIs do any form of opening prep? Like, do they bake any opening analysis into their engines? Or is it all pure search?
Yes modern AIs have an entire opening database and generally have cached the first 20+ moves of the game (for most common openings) from a database of very deep searches identifying the best move. This is absolutely a form of opening prep for AIs.
That said, even without that database a modern AI will completely topple the best human at every common chess variant. Humans cannot defeat modern AIs in chess like games.
Like my answer below, that's wrong. Even I have achieved a few draws or even wins against Stockfish in training games, and I am FM strength. From time to time you are happy to reach a simple rook endgame which happens to be won and the engine doesn't anticipate that (horizon effect). You still draw or lose 90% of those but you win 10%.
Either the engine was misconfigured, the hardware you were playing on was glitching or you are omitting something. There is no chance in the world that you can beat stockfish in standard time control.
Just because you can not do it it does not mean that others can not do it. If you search for Lichess games where strong players play against (edit: strongest!) Stockfish (which, admittedly is not the full throttle Stockfish) you will find that Stockfish by far does not win all the time. Such is a claim which only inexperienced chess beginners and Stockfish fanboys make. Stronger players know that Stockfish is relatively better, and by a far margin, but – obviously – does not win all the time due to the huge drawing range in chess. Admittedly, winning a game gets more and more difficult with every year. And, to make you happy, I have never beaten Lc0.
> If you search for Lichess games where strong players play against Stockfish ([..]) you will find that Stockfish by far does not win all the time.
I'm sure some of those games are actually stockfish v stockfish or something similar. Its pretty easy to run stockfish or lichess locally and copy the moves from each engine back and forth.
@josephg (for reasons I do not know there is no reply link below your post)
Sure, some people are cheaters. Some are not. There is no personal win in cheating against Stockfish. Usually strong players do it for training purposes, or to entertain their watchers when they stream. I actually remember having seen one who did that, and he drew. That was a party.
Yes. I hear this claim from above: "Some humans can beat stockfish."
Evidence given: "There exist some small number of games on lichess.org played against stockfish where the user won."
My counter argument is that games on lichess against stockfish don't imply a human beat stockfish. It could just be that stockfish (or other bots) can sometimes beat stockfish. And some humans surely use bots to play on their behalf in order to cheat in online games.
I don't know if any humans can beat stockfish. But I don't consider that to be strong evidence.