Norway’s chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen gestures during a game in the Tata Steel Chess India tournament in Kolkata on Nov. 17, 2024.
Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP via Getty Images
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Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP via Getty Images
Magnus Carlsen, the chess grandmaster who has become the public face of the game, was forced into a draw after an intense game played over 6 1/2 weeks — and it only took some 143,000 opponents working together to do it.
In a freestyle match that chess.com billed as Magnus vs. The World, Carlsen was pitted against a team consisting of any and every member of the online community who wanted to join.
The website said the number of players reached a record 143,000, as people from around the globe rushed to play against the Norwegian chess legend.
The game began on April 4 and ended Monday in a draw, after the Team World players thrice checked Carlsen’s king piece, forcing the tie.
“Overall, The World has played very, very sound chess,” Carlsen told Chess.com toward the end of the match.
Praising his opponents, who managed to force a draw in 32 moves, Carlsen told the website that The World team had been unrelenting in their gameplay.
“I felt that I was a little bit better early in the opening,” he said. “Then maybe I didn’t play that precisely and, honestly, since then they didn’t give me a single chance, so it was just heading toward the draw.”
Carlsen played the white pieces, making the first move. Team World played the black pieces, and each side had 24 hours to launch an opposing strike.
Team World’s moves were decided by popular vote.
960 possible starting positions
The style of play used for this mega-tournament is called Chess960, or Fischer Random Chess, named after the late chess juggernaut Bobby Fischer.
In this form of chess, pawns remain in their classic configuration, lining the first row of each players’ field, while the back row of pieces — including knights, bishops, rooks, kings and queens — are placed “semi-randomly,” according to chess.com.
The 960 refers to the number of possible starting positions in the game.
Chess has grown more popular
Craig Clawitter, a U.S. national master and professional chess instructor, was part of the horde of players that ultimately matched Carlsen.
He said he wasn’t really surprised the game ended in a tie, citing the recent explosion in chess’s popularity.
“The rest of the world is getting so much better at chess that these types of matches are probably gonna end in draws, or honestly The World might start beating the one player pretty soon,” Clawitter said.
Calling the boost in chess’s street cred “the only good thing that happened from the pandemic,” the chess expert said that between many Americans being under lockdown as a result of COVID-19 and the release of the popular Netflix miniseries The Queen’s Gambit that same year, people learned to fall in love with the strategy sport.
“Chess is more of an accepted and kind of cool thing to do now, which is crazy because in high school, I actually hid that I played chess from my friends cause I didn’t want to be called a dork,” Clawitter said.
