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‘Even I got bored after few World Championship titles’: Vishy Anand on Magnus Carlsen walking away
Carlsen won five world chess championship titles — beating opponents like Anand (twice), Sergey Karjakin, Fabiano Caruana and Ian Nepomniachtchi — before walking away from the 2023 world championship battle, thus abdicating his throne.
Magnus Carlsen with the trophy, alongside Fabiano Caruana (left) and Nodirbek Abdusattorov. (Photo: Lennart Ootes/Freestyle Chess.)
Indian chess legend Viswanathan Anand has said he understands World no.1 Magnus Carlsen‘s decision to not take part in the world championship cycle and not defending his title in 2023 after winning it five times. Anand said that he completely understood why Carlsen would take that decision due to the intense nature of preparation that went into championship matches.
“I knew that after five titles, I mean after my fifth match against (Boris) Gelfand… In fact, even that Gelfand match, I kind of dragged myself into it. I had the feeling that FIDE was giving me a world championship match almost every year and it was getting tedious. I’d been struggling in my chess for a while and I thought this one I scraped through. I think even in the end when I lost (to Carlsen in 2013), I accepted I came to terms with the fact that look I deserve to lose at a sporting level I deserve to lose,” Anand said in an interview with Lichess.
“As for Magnus himself, I can see his point of view very easily. By the fifth match, I was getting bored with these matches. How many times to do it? Carlson I think after five titles, he was ready to walk away and he said I really don’t need to play these things. So I could understand the sense of just moving on. I mean maybe in another two matches, I would also just walked away. I don’t know because I was already getting hard to drag myself there,” he added.
Carlsen won five world chess championship titles — beating opponents like Anand (twice), Sergey Karjakin, Fabiano Caruana and Ian Nepomniachtchi — before walking away from the 2022 world championship battle, thus abdicating his throne. He first won the world title in 2013, then continued to defend it four times in 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2021.
After relinquishing the world title, Carlsen has often spoken about his lack of motivation to play in classical chess tournaments.
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