Chess: newly-married Carlsen signs up with Bundesliga, Freestyle and Saudis
Magnus Carlsen, the 34-year-old world No 1 and candidate for the greatest of all time, married Ella Victoria Mallone last Saturday in Oslo, where the congregation included a film crew from Netflix. The new Mrs Carlsen, 26, was born in Hong Kong to a Norwegian mother and an American father, was educated in the US, the UK and Canada, and has spent several years in Singapore.
Carlsen?s stellar chess career, boosted by his controversial shared World Blitz title, is set to resume as early as this weekend, when the Norwegian will lead the newly promoted St Pauli team in the German Bundesliga, the strongest chess league in Europe.
St Pauli?s team, which has scored only a single point out of eight from its four matches so far, is preparing a welcome for the No 1, who is scheduled to compete against D?sseldorf and Solingen in matches to be played in Hamburg on Saturday and Sunday. Carlsen?s games will be live streamed, with play due to start at 5.15 pm GMT on Saturday, and 9.15am GMT on Sunday. The games can also be followed live on lichess.
Solingen?s probable top board is the Netherlands GM Max Warmendam, but the real interest will be in St Pauli v D?sseldorf, whose No 1 is India?s classical world champion, Gukesh Dommaraju. It would be the first Carlsen v Gukesh encounter since the 18-year-old defeated Ding Liren for the crown last month.
View image in fullscreen 3954: Louis Cheng v Zhu Yaoyao, Caplin Hastings Masters 2024-25. White to move and win. Cheng, now nine, was the 2023 World U8 Blitz Champion.
Carlsen is still a reigning world champion, thanks to his agreement with his old rival, Russia?s Ian Nepomniachtchi, to share the World Blitz title on Wall Street with the scores level at 3.5-3.5 during their sudden death tie-breaker.
Their pact was upheld by Fide?s Russian president, Arkady Dvorkovich, despite the lack of any precedent in chess or in wider sport apart from the Tokyo Olympic Games high jump, whereas reaction from grandmasters and chess fans was mostly critical. The shared title furore will soon die down, but two of Carlsen?s other recent commitments are likely to affect chess in 2025 and beyond.
Online qualifiers have taken place this week for the first leg of the five-event $3.75m Freestyle Grand Slam, to be staged at Weissenhaus, North Germany, from 7-14 February. Subsequent legs will be staged in Paris in April, New York in July, Delhi in September, and Cape Town in December.
In Freestyle, previously known as Fischer Random, Chess 960 and Chess 9LX, the placings of the back rank pieces are drawn randomly, thus eliminating the need to prepare and memorise openings before a game.
Nine players, all from the world top 20 and including Carlsen, Gukesh, and the world Nos 2 and 3 Fabiano Caruana and Hikaru Nakamura, are seeded for all five tournaments, which are organised by the entrepreneur Jan Henric Buettner, with $12m backing from sports financiers Left Lane Capital.
Carlsen said: ?We believe this is a better game than what we?ve been playing in classical chess.? He added that he sees Freestyle as an opportunity to reshape the sport, likening it to ?making chess players into race car drivers, with a culture that extends beyond the board?. He forecast ?massive potential? for reaching new followers.
The 10th player for Weissenhaus was decided by qualifiers this week, in which dozens of strong GMs took part. It was won by Slovenia?s Vladimir Fedoseev, and included a quarter-final game where Hans Niemann allowed Nepomniachtchi to checkmate him in one.
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The history of Freestyle raises some doubts, suggesting only limited interest by the millions of existing players who are satisfied with the game as it is. St Louis stages an annual Chess 9LX event, in which Garry Kasparov starred last year.
Last month, the Esports World Cup announced that online chess would be included in its programme at Riyadh this year, with Carlsen as the global ambassador. The $1.5m event, a 16-player knockout, is owned by Saudi Arabia?s Sovereign Wealth Fund, and is part of a soft power strategy designed to rebrand the country as a tourism and entertainment source.
Carlsen called the Riyadh World Cup ?an incredible opportunity to grow the game?. However, Riyadh will have fewer than a tenth of the participant numbers of Fide?s biennial World Cup and Women?s World Cup, The four-day competition will have a time limit of 10 minutes per player per game, with no additional per move increment, which is effectively fast rapid. As with last year?s Global Chess League in London, this means that clock scrambles will decide many results.
England?s annual New Year Caplin Hastings Masters will be covered in next week?s column. Meanwhile, enjoy the Hastings tactic in this week?s puzzle.
3954: 1 Qg6! and Black resigned. If 1...fxg6 2 Nxg6 mate. If 1?Qxe5 2 Q or Rxh7+! Nxh7 3 R or Qxh7 mate. If 1...h6 2 Rxh6+! and mates. If 1?Bxh3 2 Nxf7 mate. 1?Qd1+ delays mate, but is hopeless.
