World championship match play has a stony logic, where there are no prizes for glorious endeavour. It calls to mind the old joke about two hunters who encounter a bear. One puts on his running shoes. ‘You can’t outrun a bear,’ objects his friend. ‘I don’t have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you.’ After beating Ian Nepomniachtchi in December, Magnus Carlsen reflected on his experience of winning five world championship matches. ‘I managed to stay relatively process- and passion-driven against Anand in 2013, while in the last four matches it has been all about results.’
Those months consumed by a single opponent surely take a toll on the psyche. In Carlsen’s words, ‘the negative has started to outweigh the positive, even when winning’. He took the unusual step of declaring that he might not contest another match, unless his opponent were from the next generation (the most plausible candidate being 18-year-old Alireza Firouzja, currently ranked second in the world).
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