Revealed: Magnus Carlsen had ‘idiot test’ he used to decide opening prep for world championship

“Magnus always had that method to try out ideas which we called the ‘Idiot Test’. The ‘Idiot Test’ is that if you have found an (opening) idea, you have to play it against an unprepared Laurent Fressinet (French grandmaster) and beat him. If you don’t win, the idea is refuted,” Dubov said in a Russian podcast with Ilya Levitov.

“(If you don’t win with that idea against Laurent Fressinet) The idea doesn’t work! I can tell you that it’s a 90%-reliable piece of statistic! That’s how it is,” he added.

The Russian Grandmaster also revealed that in the initial world championships, the role was with Norwegian grandmaster Jon Ludvig Hammer.

“Earlier, the certified idiot would be Hans-Ludvig Hammer, but when I joined the team Hammer was no longer there, so this was Fress (Fressinet). But thank God I played much better than Fress, so the majority of the ideas passed the test, regardless of their quality,” he said.

Dubov then spoke about another member of Team Carlsen, Dutch GM Jorden van Foreest.

“That was the problem with Jorden van Foreest’s ideas later on, because as it turned out, Jorden is a desperate case in blitz, and strangely enough Fress was better than him in blitz. Jorden would tell me ‘Come on, let me show you the idea, and you go ahead and play it yourself!'” Dubov revealed.

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Dubov, who was part of Carlsen’s team for the world championship battles against Fabiano Caruana and Ian Nepomniachtchi, also spoke about how competitive the Norwegian can get. In the podcast, he opened up about his experiences with Carlsen at the world no 1’s training camps ahead of the world championship fights in 2018 (against Caruana) and 2021 (vs Nepomniachtchi).

Dubov revealed that he was invited to join the Team Carlsen after playing a spontaneous blitz match at a Chess World Cup. Dubov sets the scene of the training camp. He said he had flown to Oslo after a series of stopovers, and at the airport he was picked up by members of Team Carlsen who then picked up Carlsen before the team headed to a suburbs near Oslo for the camp.

But things started off rocky for the duo. Dubov said he had a clash with Carlsen on the first day itself at a training camp, not during a chess game, but while playing a football match.