Undoubtedly one of the most exciting world title matches in history. Very changeable, on several occasions Ian Nepomniachtchi took the lead, but Ding Liren managed to equalize. In total, 6 of 14 games ended in victory for one of the two rivals.

The 7-7 equality in the classic modality forced a tiebreaker in rapid games, where the players also showed enormous parity, just as they did during the first 14 games. There were draws in the first three, but the fourth game finally defined the champion.

First world champion for China

Playing with the black pieces, that fourth and final game went to Ding Liren, who thus became the new FIDE world champion, taking the place that until now belonged to Magnus Carlsen. He will be the first Chinese outright world champion, as the women’s championship has already had several Chinese players as champions (including current title holder Ju Wenjun).

Many specialists describe Tata Steel as the “Roland Garros of chess”. It has been played since 1938 (except in 1945 because of the war). Many of the best in history have played in it, including world champions such as: Max Euwe, Tigran Petrosian, Boris Spaski, Mikhail Botvinnik, Mikhail Tal, Anatoli Karpov, Vladimir Kramnik, Gari Kasparov, Viswanathan Anand, Veselin Topalov, and of course the last champion, Magnus Carlsen.

The 2023 edition of this tournament will be characterized by including many young talents, such as Gukesh, 16; Praggnanandhaa, 17, Vincent Keymer and Nodirbek Abdusattorov, 18; and Arjun Erigaisi, 19. 5 of the 14 contestants are players under the age of 20, which makes Niemann’s absence all the more surprising.

Niemann out the 2023 Tata Steel tournament

Another young talent who will also not be at this tournament is Alireza Firouzja, who fell out with the event organizers after a controversial finale to the 2021 tournament. Niemann’s case, however, has been much worse, as it is a problem that started. at the 2022 Sinquefield Cup, in which Magnus Carlsen accused the American of cheating.

Since then, other GMs have shown their distrust of Niemann, the most notable being Hikaru Nakamura. In addition, the Chess.com website published a report on alleged cheating in online games by the young American, who in turn filed a defamation lawsuit.

According to the Chess24.com website: “Hans Niemann claimed in his $100 million lawsuit (which he brought against Carlsen, Nakamura, and Chess.com, among others) that negotiations with the organizers stopped after the events in St. Louis.”

For this reason, the world championship must be defined by the champion and runner-up of the 2022 Candidates Tournament. And precisely one of those players will participate in Tata Steel. The Chinese Ding Liren is one of the main candidates, together with Carlsen, to win this tournament, so the Wenzhou-born player will have to be closely watched.

The 2023 edition will be marked by young talent, since several of the participants were child prodigies who little by little stop being promises to become reality. Gukesh, 16, Praggnanandhaa, 17, Vincent Keymer and Nodirbek Abdusattorov, 18, and Arjun Erigaisi, 19. In this section there could also be, although they won’t, Hans Niemann (due to what happened after St. Louis) and Alireza Firouzja (who fell out with the organizers after the event’s controversial final in 2021).

The Masters Tournament participants

There will be a total of 14 players, including three Americans: Fabiano Caruana, Wesley So and Levon Aronian. Iranian Parham Maghsoodloo will replace Polish Jan-Krzysztof Duda. The full list of players is as follows:

Magnus Carlsen
Ding Liren
Fabiano Caruana
Anish Giri
Wesley So
Richard Rapport
Levon Aronian
Dommaraju Gukesh
Parham Maghsoodloo
Arjun Erigaisi
Nodirbek Abdusattorov
Vincent Keymer
Jorden van Foreest
R Praggnanandhaa

Start of the tournament and first round

The tournament begins on January 13 and ends on the 29th of the same month. A total of 13 rounds will be played all against all and the winner will be the one who obtains the most points. However, on January 13 there will be no activity on the board, but the opening ceremony will take place and the games begin on Saturday the 14th. The clashes are not yet defined, but they will surely be determined in the next few hours.

Hans Niemann has been on the lips of the entire chess world due to the controversy he aroused at the beginning of September when, at the Sinquefield Cup in Saint Louis, United States, the world champion Magnus Carlsen withdrew before the end of the tournament due to alleged cheating committed by the american against him.

Although Carlsen did not directly accuse Niemann of cheating, with his withdrawal from the tournament (something not very common to see in the world champion) plus other statements, they hinted that he was indirectly accusing the young talent of cheating. As a result of this, Niemann began to be on the lips of the entire chess world.

The story adds new chapters

One of those who spoke about what happened, although trying to be prudent and without attacking Niemann directly, was the famous streamer and chess player Hikaru Nakamura, who somehow agreed with Magnus Carlsen by joining the accusations against his compatriot for doing cheating in the Sinquefield Cup.

The controversy continued in online chess, more precisely in the sixth round of the Julius Baer Generation Cup tournament, where Carlsen was supposed to play Niemann, but gave up after making just one move, and again generating criticism for and against the young chess player.

And what started as a feud within the chess world turned massive when the famous platform chess.com published a report showing that Niemann had cheated in more than 100 games on the website, later published in the Washington Post. Hans Moke admitted to having cheated in online games in his youth, although not in that amount and never in face-to-face games.

The lawsuit

Although many point out that this was beneficial for Niemann since he went from being a complete unknown to one of the most recognizable faces in chess, the truth is that his reputation was damaged and that has affected him professionally. It was expected that he would be invited to the prestigious Tata Steel tournament, but as a result of this trouble it seems that the organizers have given up doing so.

For this reason, Niemann started a lawsuit not only against Magnus Carlsen but also against the Norwegian’s online chess platform, Play Magnus; Chess.com executive Danny Rensch and American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura. The document with the demand of Hans Moke consists of 44 pages.

According to the website chess.com (one of the entities involved in this case): “against all five entities, Niemann is claiming slander, libel, unlawful group boycott under the Sherman Act, tortious interference with contract and business expectancies, and civil conspiracy. For each cause of action, at least $100 million is claimed”.

First of all, it is convenient to analyze two cases that could present confusion and explain why they cannot be included in this list. The first is the German Emmanuel Lasker, the second champion in history. In 1920 he resigned to defend his title and appointed Jose Raul Capablanca as his successor, something that FIDE did not accept, since he had the right not to defend his title, but not to choose his successor. Lasker is not on this list because in 1921 he finally agreed to play the match that he ultimately lost.

The second case is that of Russian Alexander Alekhine, the fourth world champion in history. He held the title in two periods: between 1927 and 1934 and then between 1937 and 1946. The next champion was the Soviet Mikhail Botvinnik, who won the title in 1948 but never played a title match against Alekhine. Sadly, the Russian passed away in 1946 so he technically did not give up defending the world championship (and in fact, it is known that before he died he wanted to play the match against Botvinnik).

The players who gave up defending their title

In all history only two players refused to defend their title. The first of them was Robert James Fischer, champion in 1972 and who had to defend the championship in 1975. However, he had differences with FIDE and in the way the match was to be played, and that is why he decided not to play, winning Anatoly Karpov by default.

The second was Garry Kasparov, who created a parallel organization to FIDE, the Classical World Chess Championships and in 1993 the first title match was played between its founder Kasparov and Nigel Short, while in parallel, FIDE held its own tournament in which Karpov was champion, having for some years two world champions due to the existence of both organizations.

Magnus Carlsen started 2022 brilliantly. After the match against Ian Niepomniachtchi in which he retained his world title, the Norwegian had expressed two things that shook the chess world: the first (and most important) was that if the title challenger within 2 years it was not the French of Iranian descent Alireza Firouzja, he would give up his title; and the second one was that had the intention of reaching 2900 elo points. Obviously, winning this tournament brings him closer to that goal.

The curious thing is that, despite the fact that Magnus Carlsen had a brilliant tournament, his victory came earlier because his opponent in the last game, Daniil Dubov, will not show up to play (belowwe will explain why). In round 12, the Norwegian defeated Fabiano Caruana and thus reached 8 ½ points, which will be 9 ½ due to the absence of Dubov, a score that none of his pursuers (Mamedyarov and Rapport) will be able to match even if they won their last game in round 13.

The controversies of Tata Steel 2022

In this Tata Steel 2022 there were two controversies. Actually, maybe it was only one, because the first one had to do with the anger of several fans at Magnus Carlsen for his attitude in the round 10 game against Sergey Karjakin. After only 16 moves, and with almost all the pieces still on the board, the chess players repeated moves and agreed to draw.

That result favored Carlsen, who at thattime was leading the tournament. However, not a few people were outraged by the passive attitude of the world champion who, it must be said, did not use any illegal means to obtain a beneficial result. The controversy was rather on the internet, where several fans understood it was a “cowardly” attitude on the part of the champion.

The other controversy involves Daniil Dubov (who was recently the victim of the anger of several Russian chess players for being part of Team Carlsen in the Norwegian’s match against his compatriot Ian Niepomniachtchi), who lost his seventh round game by forfeit after refusing to wear a mask due to having been in close contact with a person who has tested positive for COVID-19.

The Russian’s decision had, as expected, reactions for and against. The regulations do not oblige players to use the mask during games. On the other hand, the result of his PCR was not yet known and as a matter of principle, Dubov declined to play with a mask. The truth is that after playing round 10, his PCR was positive (although initially it had been negative) so he withdrew from the tournament without playing the last three games, one of which would be against Magnus Carlsen in round 13.

Yesterday the tiebreaker for the first and second places of the World Rapid Championship was played. The “mini-match” between Nepomniachtchi and Abdusattorov was won 1.5-0.5 by the Uzbek. At the end of the tournament, there were four players equaled at the top of the standings with 9.5 points: the aforementioned chess players, in addition to the World champion Magnus Carlsen and the number two in the ranking, Fabiano Caruana.

However, due to the tiebreaker criteria (average Elo of the rivals against whom they played in the previous rounds) those favored to contest the tiebreaker were the Uzbek and the Russian. Magnus Carlsen, outraged, complained to Norwegian TV: “It’s a completely idiotic rule. Either all players on the same amount of points join the playoff, or no-one does”.

The World Champion and his criticism of FIDE

The world champion continued his criticism by assuring that: “it’s a real pity to lose my chance for a playoff based on tiebreaks. A few years ago there was no playoff. Obviously you know the rules in advance, I knew it during the event and that it could be a factor, but I don’t think it should be 100 percent up to the players to have to correct and complain about a system that is really, really bad. I don’t know about most people, but for me any tiebreak system is okay, as long as it obviously doesn’t hurt some kind of sense of fairness. To have a playoff for victory is very much how it should be in such a prestigious event, something you obviously also should have in the Candidates. When you have a playoff for first place, you have to let all the players on the same amount of points join the playoff. Anything else is just plain wrong”.

Furthermore, Carlsen pointed out against FIDE: “What FIDE have been doing, I have no idea. I have to take some self-criticism that my father and I have not been guard dogs at FIDE, which is obviously necessary, otherwise they f *** up every time”. And also added: “having a tiebreaker for the title is a step in the right direction, but I can’t imagine any other logical reasons for having a maximum of two players in a tiebreaker, and that’s too amateurish in a World Championship”.

Support for Carlsen’s criticism

One of those who supported Magnus‘s criticism regarding the tiebreaker criteria was Sergey Karjakin, who in his tweet shared a note with the Norwegian’s criticism with the words: “time to agree with a World Champion”. Another who also spoke through twitter was Hikaru Nakamura, who commented that: “Seeing the World Rapid Championship go from 15 rounds to 13 was an oddity, but seeing these tiebreak rules for a ‘World Championship’ is beyond laughable”.

For his part, GM Ben Finegold commented: “if I had to think of the worst system of deciding a Champion, the one they are using is near the top. Thinking is not their strong suit”. Also, the GM Levy Rozman tweeted: “completely ridiculous situation in World Rapid 2021. Four people: Carlsen, Nodirbek, Nepo, and Fabiano tied for 1st place. But according to regulations, ONLY Top 2 by tiebreaks have a playoff for Gold/Silver. Horrible rule!”.

What did FIDE reply?

David Llada, FIDE‘s Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, commented to the Chess24 website: “It is difficult to prepare for a playoff between a number of players that you cannot anticipate. It poses a lot of problems for an event that is being broadcast live and needs to stick to a tentative schedule”.

And he also added: “the idea of having a play-off in case of a two-way tie at the top of the table made sense. It seemed a much better alternative than not having a play-off at all and having to resort to classical tiebreak systems for Swiss tournaments. However, the opinion of the players is duly noted. They were supposed to know the regulations, but no-one pointed this out before the tournament, or during the technical meeting”.

It is that recently it was known that Daniil Dubov, a Russian player and part of the team from that country, was part of “Team Carlsen” during the match against his compatriot Ian Niepomniachtchi. Once this news was known, there were not a few who came out to accuse Daniil of “traitor”, recalling those times of accusations of espionage and treason that occurred in the matches between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky, and those of Anatoly Karpov against to Victor Krochnoi.

Treason accusations

One of the first to come forward to accuse Dubov was Sergey Karjakin, a former Carlsen champion who was part of Niepomniachtchi’s team for the world title match. This he said in a tweet after the match: “Of course I congratulate the world champion, but a little comment. Imagine you have to play a title match against Carlsen. Would you accept help from Hammer or Tari?”, in reference to Aryan Tari and Jon Ludvig Hammer, the GMs who are number two and three in Norway.

Another who came out to accuse Daniil, although more harshly, was the coach of his adolescence, Sergey Shipov, who said: “Ah, Danya, Danya… Why? For how much? Why was it not possible to rest for a match or comment on a website? And now the seeds of discord have been sown in the Russian team”.

In addition, Shipov made a comparison on what would have happened in the case of Azeri or Polish chess players: “Imagine that Duda is playing the match and Wojtaszek helps his rival. How would they look at it in Warsaw? Or if Mamedyarov plays the match of his life and Radjabov is on the other side. Would they react calmly in Baku? “.

What did Niepomniachtchi say?

Ian Niepomniachtchi chilled the controversy. Far from being outraged like many of his compatriots, the world runner-up responded when asked: “We should thank Dubov for that!” since he understands that those games in which Dubov‘s help was seen much more were those in which he had the most chances to win.

Despite this, Niepomniachtchi considered that the most logical thing would have been for Daniil to remain neutral. In an interview with him for the Russian Chess Federation, Ian commented: “Above all, I think it is an aspect of the business, because Daniil has been cooperating with the Carlsen team since 2018. On the other hand, we also worked together for a few two years, so it would make more sense for him, in my opinion, to remain neutral. On behalf of the team, however, we must thank Dubov, because my best chances of winning in singles matches came after those ideas that, it seems, can be attributed to Daniil’s manual work”.

What did Dubov reply about the controversy?

Of course, in the face of so many accusations, the Russian GM had to come out to defend himself. In an interview for championat.com, Daniil responded to the question of when he started working with Carlsen for the world title match: “Before the start of the Candidates. They asked me what I thought about the idea of helping. I replied that it would be ok. That is perhaps the first thing I would like to point out about this rather strange review. In normal teams all theagreements are formulated in advance”.

On the other hand, Dubov established a difference between a Carlsen-Niepomniachtchi match and one between the Russian and Norwegian teams, understanding that it is not the same for two chess players to play for the title as two countries. On the question of whether the world championship was by teams, the Russian GM replied: “So, of course, it most likely won’t help the Norwegians, but this was a Niepomniachtchi against Carlsen. And there are not only Russians on Ian’s team, as I understand it. Here, you could say, he is a blond haired boy against a dark haired boy”.

Undoubtedly a piece of news that shakes the chess world and takes us back to the year 1975, when the great American, Robert James “Bobby” Fischer gave up defending his title won three years before against Boris Spassky against another of the most brilliant minds who gave the history of chess: Anatoly Karpov.

If finally Magnus‘s words would be true (and according to his father, Henrik Carlsen, the translation that was made of his son’s Norwegian words was not a misinterpretation), he would be repeating the same story that happened more than 45 years ago, when Fischer decided not to defend his title, and he disappeared from public life.

Exhaustion or lack of motivation?

Magnus Carlsen has been the absolute and undisputed chess champion for 8 years and has been number 1 in the world for more than 10 years. It should be remembered that the champion is not necessarily number 1 in the world since to be champion you must beat the reigning champion in a match, while to be number 1 in the world, you must have a higher Elo score than the rest, something that requires a lot constancy and yes, that entails a lot of mental exhaustion.

Or as the Norwegian genius explains in his own words: “I’ve been thinking all year that this duel would be the last. The joy I felt when I won it is much less than in the first ones. The positive part of achieving it does not outweigh the negative”. The momentum to reach the top is often greater than the strength to hold there seems to be indicating Carlsen.

And he also added: “Honestly, I don’t enjoy the World Championships as much as I do the tournaments on the international circuit. In the World Cup it is basically about keeping the crown. I admit that this is very challenging, but it is also tremendously demanding. It’s nice to be here, with all the paraphernalia that surrounds a World Cup. But honestly, I could live without it”.

This would be the end of Magnus’s career?

Everything would seem to indicate that no. MagnusCarlsen has made it very clear that his objective, in case Firouzjawas not the challenger, is to step aside.Itis not in his plans to abandon professional chess practice: “My intention is to continue playing chess for many more years, even if I’m not theworld champion. In that case, keeping number one would be the fundamental objective”.

Magnus, in addition, would have set two goals that really seem unattainable: to be number 1 in the world for more than 20 years, surpassing the Garry Kasparov mark; and surpassing the barrier of 2,900 Elo points, something that would force him to practically win all the tournaments that hewill play from now on.