It’s a valid question that crops up more and more lately. The latest impetus for asking it was Carlsen’s statement from his recent interview with chesscom when they spoke about the purchase of his company Play Magnus Group.

Carlsen openly stated that he expects classical chess to be phased out at his level. This is different to what Kasparov predicted more than 10 years ago when he said that classical chess will be played only by the elite, while for everybody else it will be just entertainment.

First we have to realise that Carlsen spoke as a shareholder of his company that was bought, so he had to play to the tune – chesscom is all about faster time controls. However, I think there is a deeper issue here.

Chronologically, Carlsen has called for change of the format of the World Championship to matches with faster time controls. Then this year he officially withdrew from the classical championship, something I wrote about in my previous post, where the main reason was the gruelling hard work necessary to play these matches. Then in the interview with chesscom he openly said that he expects classical chess to be played less. He said the reason for this was the difficulty of finding new ideas in the opening at his level.

Another notable thing he said was that he would like to play Fischer Random at classical time controls.

If we connect the dots of all of the above, we can come to the logical conclusion that Carlsen doesn’t want to work hard anymore.

Chess has always been very hard at the highest level. There was no World Champion who complained about that while they were still in their prime. They knew they had to work extremely hard to overcome their competition and come up with “new ideas in the opening.”

The comment about Fischer Random serves as proof of the above. Carlsen isn’t against classical chess per se, he likes to delve deeply in a position if he can just play from the beginning, not being burdened by preparation and memorisation.

But at 31 Carlsen became tired. He’s been working extremely hard for almost 20 years and doesn’t want to do that anymore. He wants to have fun, play on fast chess on chesscom and entertain himself and the world. He knows that his theoretical baggage from his matches is more than sufficient to keep him afloat, especially at faster time controls when even sub-optimal opening ideas can be tried without being punished.

I have to add that this doesn’t bide well for the still reigning World Champion. The moment you stop working hard you start going down. He is still head and shoulders above the rest, but that won’t last for long. That goal of 2900 will never happen.

After Carlsen other players also came out with the same preferences for faster time controls. With chesscom injecting vast amounts of money in their events, it’s easy to foresee a never-ending string of online tournaments which are financially more beneficial than any classical over-the-board event.

Who will care about classical chess then?

I care about classical chess and I know FIDE does too. But can anything be done to stop the tide?