[saucymew]

It feels like the cohort GM player pool is mentally cooked against Magnus.

Youngsters like Lazavik during the Speed Chess Championship or Sindarov in Freestyle were the most recent convincing wins against Magnus, but the historical mental edge that Magnus comes into each game after beating the brakes out of everyone is hard to overcome.

Magnus' time will come! But not today.

[epolanski]

I don't think it's merely mental albeit it seems like even nervous Carlsen is cooler than his very focused opponents (see game 3 vs Fabiano where caruana had a completely winning position after carlsens blunder).

Carlsen has spent the core of his career mastering two aspects historically underlooked aspects of the game.

The first is the endgame, and there isn't much to say there. He's by far the best end game player by far and it's not even close.

The second are drawish locked positions where most GMs can't but see a draw. Carlsen realized that in order for it to be a draw his opponents still have to play perfect and he focused a lot on accumulating small but convincing advantages in those kind of games.

Another thing that should not be overlook: mental strength, like you point out.

[somenameforme]

They had a heart rate monitor at one of the freestyle events which physically affirms what you're saying here. Carlsen's heart rate was barely above resting while his opponents were invariably like they were running a marathon. Even when he was losing, he remained calmer than when his opponents were in normal positions.

I think that should be a normal part of chess competition. It provides some really interesting metadata for spectators. To some degree it also emphasizes the importance of something people don't normally associate with chess - physical conditioning. When your heart is pounding for hours and the cortisol flowing, you literally get physically exhausted.

[matwood]

> When your heart is pounding for hours and the cortisol flowing, you literally get physically exhausted.

Not only that, when the body enters flight response the brain makes mistakes.

When I started jiujitsu many years ago someone asked the professor what's the biggest difference between a white belt and black belt. He thought for a second and said something along the lines that everyone loses, even black belts. The difference is that a black belt will be calm and able to think of solutions until the very end, whereas someone who is untrained panics, isn't able to think, and makes mistakes.

Staying calm is a lesson for life really.

[fernandopj]

IMHO a huge aspect of Carlsen mental strength isn't just the focused, at-the-game part, but we just see him enjoying Chess in many angles: not only he plays all styles, he streams relaxed, he plays Lichess and Chess.com; Chess is not only his job and passion, but it seems that he's also able to relax while engaging with it.

The only top-athlete that I see do the same is Max Verstappen, who is know to play competitive racing-sims online even hours before a real F1 race.

[quantummagic]

Magnus has streamed playing chess while drunk, in a party/loud atmosphere, and had some very fun and exciting games. He's a blast.

[NickC25]

he's played other GMs while very drunk and playing bullshit openings.

He still wipes the floor with them. Guy is just a beast even compared with normal grandmasters.

[dwd]

Carlsen has always had a tenacity that allows him to come back from positions other players would give up on thinking to conserve effort to fight another day. Mental strength and stamina to stay in the fight has always been something that made him who he is.

You also can't underestimate physical stamina. Kasparov in his 5-3 result against Karpov in 1984-85 was eventually halted due to Karpov's exhaustion and losing 18kg over the match period.

[pinkmuffinere]

> losing 18kg over the match period.

woah that's crazy, I was not aware of this. That's like 36 weeks of aggressive weight loss.

edit: Looks like it lasted 5 months (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Chess_Championship_1984%...).

[somenameforme]

Chess ability seems distributed in a power law, rather than any sort of a normal distribution. There are repeatedly, throughout history, players that are just much better than everybody else, including the 2nd best player in the world. Lasker, for instance, was world champion for 26 consecutive years while also regularly dominating tournaments during that period as well. Kasparov was #1 for 21 years, and so on.

I'd go further to say I think this is true in many things. For instance if you're into wrestling, you know the name of Alexander Karelin [1] who ended his career with a record of 887 wins and 2 losses (both losses by a single point and both highly controversial). He was winning olympic gold, repeatedly, not only without a single defeat but without his opponents even scoring a single point against him. His ears tell the story - 889 world class matches, and he doesn't even have cauliflower ear.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Karelin

[hyperbovine]

Same exact thing happened in tennis. There was a whole "lost generation" of amazingly talented players who just basically shat the bed whenever they stepped onto the court with Djokovic, Federer, or Nadal. It wasn't until much younger players like Alcaraz and Sinner came on the scene, who weren't quite as overpowered by the aura of the Big 3, that the playing field finally leveled. (And now they themeselves are turning into those guys for everyone else, haha.)

[p1esk]

Or maybe the “lost generation” was simply not as good as Djokovic, Federer, or Nadal.

[smnscu]

Quite chuffed someone else mentioned Djokovic, who is close to 39 and just played an Australian Open final. (Yes he got lucky with 2 freebies but he _did_ beat Sinner in the semifinal fair and square, and managed to win the first set before running out of juice)

[Ntrails]

imho Sinner and Alcaraz didn't solve the "overpowering aura" so much as the physical wear and tear took the trio down enough pegs to be much more attainable, and Djokovic is still competing impressively well.

[bmacho]

I'm not sure why are you so sure that everyone plays worse when playing against some big name. I'd estimate that 90-95% of the top ranked players don't play worse when they play against big names.

[wavemode]

We often think of chess as something you "learn" how to do. But players like Magnus are evidence that there's really some neurological "muscle" for chess which some people just have naturally more of than others. The way in which Magnus has just so obviously been so much better than every other player in the world for over 15 years now, to the point of becoming bored and refusing to continue competing in the classical World Championships, speaks volumes.

[peanuty1]

He doesn't play the classical championship anymore because it's 6+ months of daily hard work to prepare for it and he's already won it 5 times.

[wavemode]

You and I are saying the same thing.

[bmacho]

"6+ months of daily hard work"

"to the point of becoming bored"

[wavemode]

Did your eyes stop reading the "hard work" comment once you got to the word "and"?

Preparing for chess tournaments is always hard work. But the point is that he no longer has motivation to do that hard work to participate in the championship, since he's won it so many times and the result is never in doubt.

He said previously that he would defend his title again if his challenger was Alireza Firouzja. In other words there are certain things which would've caused him to be more interested /care more about competing, and thus motivated him to do that hard work. Make any sense?

[reassess_blind]

I’d love to see a classical (or rapid/blitz) tournament where the players don’t know who they’re playing.

Separate rooms, arbiters make the moves for the opponent.

I think we’d see some interesting results.

[FreakLegion]

Are you referring to the odd individual game? Magnus beat Lazavik pretty badly in the SCC and knocked Sindarov out of the Freestyle final.

[saucymew]

Individual games.

The ones that specifically come to mind are Lazavik vs. Carlsen, Speed Chess Championship 2025 Semi-Final, Round 3, and Sindarov vs. Carlsen, Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Finals 2025 in South Africa, Round 1 of the Group Stage Finals.

[somenameforme]

I assume you mean that beautiful tactical shot Lazavik found? In general these sort of games are the opposite of convincing. The reason is that we're all human and make tactical mistakes now and again, even more so in very rapid time controls. What generally defines players overall edge though is the ability to grind small edges, rather than stumble into knock-out blows.

For instance this is why Carlsen was so crushed by his loss to Niemann in 2022 (that led to the cheating claim controversy). Niemann actively avoided a draw and then systematically outplayed Magnus in a very difficult R+N v R+B ending. This is also why players like Erdogmus seem to have so much potential. It's not the tactics - which is basically a prerequisite to high level play, but his ability to just systematically grind down extremely strong players like MVL.

[BrtByte]

Magnus it often feels like opponents aren't just playing the position, they're playing the idea of Magnus

[make3]

or maybe he's just very good?

[rybosworld]

Agree you don't have to overcomplicate it. Magnus is a generational talent.

[datsci_est_2015]

I would almost say “generational” is underselling it. Gretzky might be the only competitor that’s even comparable in terms of dominance.

[dwd]

Sir Donald Bradman would like a word...

[system2]

Brain ages. He will eventually decline just like any human being. Let's hope by then he will have the wisdom to smile when that happens.

[make3]

Ageism also just one of these shitty unproven biases, like sexism, which is self-realizing by applying pressure to people who fall out of the mold even slightly.

He's 30 something, not 90.

[epolanski]

It's not unproven, there's ample literature and research on the fact.

Besides, the age pool of chess itself confirms it.

There's a single player in his 50s in the top 50 of chess and not a single 60+ in the top 100.

Also, even carlsen himself says he's no longer as good as he was years before and his mind isn't as strong.

[bsder]

> Ageism also just one of these shitty unproven biases

You might be right, if we were talking about anything except chess.

Chess, unlike everything else, has a clear ranking system and lots of records for people to analyze. And unfortunately, the record is very clear: chess ability decreases after a certain age.

However, the decrease is more likely due to stamina than mental decline. Chess tournaments take a long time, and stamina definitely decreases with age. However, pro athletes demonstrate that you can probably go until around your early 40s before it becomes a real issue.

Having said that, it will be interesting to see how this generation does in the blitz formats as they age. Those will be less dependent upon stamina and a better measure of mental acuity for chess.

[renewiltord]

He’s got a point. If the measure works for age, then let’s run it for sex, race, and religion. Then we can make conclusions about these categories and test if we’re willing to accept them. If we’re not, but we’re willing to accept them for age, then the balance of chance is that we’re ageist and just blinding ourselves to it because we are ageist.

I think looking at the data you’d have to conclude that women can’t play chess as well as men, that black men can’t play chess as well as white men, and that Judeo-Christian (and perhaps Hindu Brahmins) beliefs are just as indicative.

If we deny those conclusions as bigotry of immutable characteristics, it naturally leads to the age question.

[bsder]

> I think looking at the data you’d have to conclude that women can’t play chess as well as men, that black men can’t play chess as well as white men, and that Judeo-Christian (and perhaps Hindu Brahmins) beliefs are just as indicative.

Actually, chess data suggests that all of them are as good as one another. As soon as you have enough candidates in the pipeline, magically, any specific group suddenly becomes as good as any other.

On the women's side, the Polgar sisters are both exemplar and counterexample. Clearly, given sufficient training, women CAN be rated highly (Judit cracked 2700). The fact that the women's side hasn't exploded just like the men's side can mostly be tracked to the fact that chess isn't considered a "feminine pursuit" worth putting the time into (that finally seems to be changing slowly in recent decades).

[IMTDb]

Regarding sexism; most tournaments in Chess (including the world championship) are fully open and are thus gender netral: anyone can participate regardless of sex/gender and will compete on equal footing.

Women only categories have been created to give women visibility because they mostly were not able to reach advanced levels in the open format.

Some women choose to compete with men (Judit Polgár being a somewhat recent example) but most go straight to the women only tournaments to have a shot.

The men vs women « bias » is not unproven, they litterally had to create entire categories of competiton to account for it.

[kaonwarb]

Cognition certainly declines with age at the population level. See e.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4906299/.

[make3]

yes but he's 30 not 90, and knowledge and experience continues to accumulate through life, which can certainly compensate

[DustinEchoes]

The decline starts in your early thirties, and those who are pushing their cognition to its limit are the first to notice.

[elevation]

If the skill you need to select for is tactical combinatorics, then Chess dominance as a function of age would seem to support the premise of ageism.

What ageism ignores is that outside of chess, prescience outperforms other measures of productivity.

[hikkerl]

Can you provide at least three (3) peer-reviewed studies to support this?

[nilslindemann]

> Magnus' time will come! But not today.

Hasn't Magnus' time already come, and isn't it still Magnus' time? He is #1 on all three lists[1] and so long that I have forgotten when he was not.

[1]: https://2700chess.com/

[bee_rider]

I think they mean his time to be dethroned.

[nilslindemann]

Ah okay.