After 20 years at the top of chess, Magnus Carlsen is making his next move

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STAVANGER, Norway (AP) — Few chess players relish Magnus Carlsen’s celebrity status.

A 13-year-old grandmaster, a refusal to play an American dogged by cheating allegations, and a venture into the world of online chess games have made Norway’s Carlsen a household name.

Only a few chess players have been able to produce the magic commodity that separates Norway’s Magnus Carlsen from his peers: fame.

Only legends like Russia’s Garry Kasparov and American Bobby Fischer can match his name and Carlsen is arguably a more dominant player. Last month, he beat both men to be named the greatest player in the history of the International Chess Federation.

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But his incentive to obtain professional titles is fading. Carlsen, 33, now wants to leverage his fame to help turn the game he loves into a spectator sport.

“I’m at a different stage in my career,” he told the Associated Press. “I’m not ambitious when it comes to professional chess. I still want to play, but I don’t necessarily have that hunger. I play for the love of the game.”

Offering a new way to interact with the game, Carlsen on Friday launched his app, Take Take Take, which will follow live matches and players, explaining matches in an accessible way, which, Carlsen says, is sometimes missing from streaming platforms like YouTube and Twitch. . “It’s going to be cooler,” he says.

Carlsen intends to use his experience to provide summaries and analysis for his new app, starting with the World Chess Championship in November between Ding Liren of China and Gokesh Domaraju of India. He will not compete himself as he has voluntarily relinquished the title in 2023.

Carlsen is no newbie when it comes to chess apps. Play Magnus, which he started in 2014, gave online users the chance to play against a chess engine modeled after his playing style. The company ballooned to include a range of apps, and was purchased for about $80 million in 2022 by Chess.com, the world’s largest chess site.

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Carlsen and Mats Andre Christiansen, CEO of his company, Fantasy Chess, are betting that a chess game where users can follow individual players and pieces, filters to explain the different elements of each game, and light-touch analysis will capture causal viewers. Away from the sometimes rarefied air of chess. The free app was launched in an attempt to build the user base before trying to monetize it. “That will come later, perhaps through advertising or deeper analysis,” Christiansen says.

While Take Take Take offers different prospects through streaming services, it is still launching in a crowded market through Chess.com, which has more than 100 million users, YouTube, Twitch, and the FIDE’s website. World Chess was valued at approximately $54 million when it was listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Having access to chess engines that can overcome any human means of cheating has never been easier. However, it can still be used to shave off thousands of hours of book-bound research, and hone skills that would otherwise be impossible against human opponents.

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“I think matches today are of higher quality because the preparation is getting deeper and deeper and AI is helping us play. It is reshaping the way we evaluate games, especially for the new generation of players,” says Carlsen.

At the same time, he admits that two decades after becoming a grandmaster, his mind doesn’t quite calculate at the hurricane speed it once did. “Most people have less power as they get older. The brain gets slower. I’ve actually felt that for a few years. The processing power of younger players is faster.”

However, he intends to be the best in the world for many years to come.

“My brain is a little slower, and I probably don’t have as much energy. But chess is about combining energy, computing power, and experience. I’m still closer to the peak than the trough,” he said.

Chess has reached a wave of popularity started by Carlsen himself.

He became the highest-ranked player in the world in 2011. In 2013, he won the first of five world championships. In 2014, he achieved the highest ever chess ranking of 2882, and has remained the undisputed world number one for the past thirteen years.

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Beyond the table, chess influencers, such as Hikaru Nakamura, the world No. 2, are using social media to bring the game to a wider audience. Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit” cemented the unexpected sex appeal of chess when it became one of the streamer’s biggest hits in 2020.

And in 2022, Carlsen’s refusal to play against Hans Nyman, the American grandmaster, who has admitted to using technology to cheat in online games in the past, created a rare advantage in the usually quiet world of chess. There is no evidence of Neiman cheating in live games, but the feud between the pair has pushed the game further into the public consciousness.

It remains to be seen whether chess can continue to grow without the full professional involvement of its biggest celebrities.

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