The Country Club and the Circus
Where is chess headed in 2025?
Let’s begin with a thought experiment: it’s early 2020 and you’ve decided to take the next four years off. No chess, no access to information. Perhaps you’re living in a remote cabin the woods, maybe you decide to be cryogenically frozen until the pandemic ends. Whatever your method and motivation, you wake up in December 2024 to this:
Your confusion is quite understandable. Yes, that is a real game of chess with real money on the line. Nope, not bughouse. And yes, that’s Magnus Carlsen, still the world’s highest rated player in every format imaginable, getting quite brutally worked over. No, he’s not world champion anymore. Have you heard of Gukesh? How about freestyle chess? Well, I’ve got a story for you …
Part 1: “In accordance with the demands of Garry Kasparov”
To tell this tale properly we need to go back to the 80s and 90s, when Kasparov and Karpov dominated the chess world and played each other so many times that we could have safely named the world championship match after them. They were the best of the best, two legendary players who pushed each other and chess itself to new heights. They embodied what I’m going to call the country club: the exclusive group of grandmasters fighting for the right to be the best classical chess player in the world.
The country club is patriarchal, it is elitist, it is unforgiving. Its history stretches back to 1886 when Steinitz beat Zukertort in a twenty game match. Seventeen more men have won a match for the world chess champion since. Six of them—Lasker, Alekhine, Botvinnik, Karpov, Kasparov, and Carlsen, held the title for 92 of those 138 years. A similarly exclusive group of players have held the top spot on the FIDE rating list since 1971: Fischer, Karpov, Kasparov, Kramnik, Topalov, Anand, and Carlsen. Few grandmasters have even had a shot the title, and it has been psychologically devastating to some who have captured it.
The denizens of the country club are fiercely competitive sportsmen, but they are deeply aware of the tradition that the country club represents. The greatest games in chess history decorate the club’s walls to be debated, discussed, held up as works of art. Positions like the one below are etched into the memory of those who witnessed it and those who came after. No other sport can boast of such a powerful connection to its past.
1993 represents an inflection point for the country club. It’s interesting to note that no matter how many times he defeated his eternal opponent, Kasparov could not prevent Karpov from reaching the title match itself; that was up to Nigel Short, who defeated Karpov in the candidates and became the second non-Soviet player to play in a world championship match since the end of World War II. Kasparov and Short were not ideal rivals in terms of chess strength, but their political interests made them eager collaborators. Their project: escape from FIDE. The revolutionary times made this seem plausible, perhaps even inevitable. The Cold War was over, old institutions had fallen, and a new future for chess lay ahead.
This was how the Professional Chess Association was born (and then died): initial membership two (Kasparov and Short), funded by Intel, organizer of the 1993 and 1995 title matches, defunct by 1996. It is to Kasparov’s credit that he did not break the long held tradition of the country club. Rather than trying to imagine a new way forward for chess, he simply recreated the structures and systems of the world championship cycles of the past, with himself as both leading player and politician. It could not have been any other way: Kasparov loves the country club too much to damage it or change it significantly. Consider his work after retirement, the My Great Predecessors series, a love letter of sorts to the champions who inspired him and whose ideas he inherited.
In certain respects, Kasparov was the greatest champion the country club has ever seen. His brilliant games adorn its walls, he held its title longer than any other modern champion. He fought for the rights of professional players, going so far as to risk his own valued place in chess history. On the other hand, his rule of the PCA exacerbated one of the fundamental problems of the country club: its tendency towards exclusivity. Valery Salov, pulling no punches, wrote in 1998 that
As any person blinded with a lust for power, Kasparov needed total control in all spheres of his activities, and this is where the problems for the chess players began. Creating new organizations and destroying them immediately has become his favorite pastime, and most chess insiders have probably lost count already. The PCA was number six or seven. It has become a sort of paranoid game which, however, had one significant implication for the chess players—the increasing importance of pertaining to a certain lobby in order not to be blacklisted by the petty mafia which was little by little spinning its web in the chess world.1
Alexander Khalifman echoed the same sentiment a couple years later: Kasparov controlled who got invited to the top tournaments, and one’s professional career was determined by one’s political connections. To explain his unexpected Linares invitation, he wrote,
Some months ago I read a funny article in some Russian newspaper. Here is an exact quote: ‘The traditional super-tournament of Linares will take place in February 2000. In accordance with the demands of World Champion Garry Kasparov, the six highest-rated players were invited to play there’. Then Alexander Morozevich declined the invitation and somehow I was invited.2
The tradition remained intact, but the rules had been dissolved. Or perhaps more accurately, the power that the Soviet Union had held over elite chess for more than four decades had been appropriated by a single individual. And when Kasparov shockingly lost the title to Vladimir Kramnik in 2000, his appeal to the old rules, gone but not forgotten, was evident:
Kramnik could say, yes, no, whatever. But I expect him, whatever Brain Games does, to live according to the standards I established. He won the match, I hope he will not only inherit the title, but also the rules I followed during my 15 years. I never refused to play the strongest opponent. I tried to play Karpov in ‘97, I tried to play Shirov in ‘98, I tried to play Anand in ‘99. There was no money available because nobody cared. I think we live in a world where only money can indicate public interest.3
There are two interesting nuggets in Kasparov’s response. First, assuming that we’re taking him at his word, he struggled to generate interest and funding for what would have been a variety of really interesting matches in the late 1990s. And second, Kasparov never got his return match. When Kramnik was asked about Kasparov’s influence in the chess world and desire for a rematch, he smirked and said that Kasparov had taken things as far as he could, that chess was in need of new leadership.
Part 2: “It was a form of prostitution”
The circus4 has always existed alongside the country club, although for decades it was more sideshow than big top. They exist in complementary opposition to one another. The country club is exclusive, the circus is open to all. The country club embodies tradition, the circus is fleeting, ephemeral. The country club is deeply serious, the circus is fun, perhaps a little strange. It is in the circus that we find many of the things that attracted us to chess in the first place: the simul, the knight’s tour5, the blindfold exhibition, blitz, bughouse, games played at odds, thematic tournaments6, Fischer random chess, Capablanca chess. If the role of the country club is to preserve the chess traditions and history, the role of the circus is revitalization when the game begins to seem stale.
By the mid-1980s, FIDE, ruler of the country club, was considering ways to appropriate aspects of the circus. Rapid chess was a way to liven things up, and FIDE floated the idea of rapid ratings and even rapid titles. This was anathema to many of the world elite, despite an early trial run by—who else?—Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short:
The first big speed match was played in February, 1987, between me and Nigel Short. We played in the famous Hippodrome discotheque in London at 25 minutes per side, on a fancy stage in tuxedos. I won 4-2 with no draws, it was a great event. I remember showing the tape to my colleagues in Brussels. There was an opinion in the room that it was a form of prostitution!7
The status of rapid chess became one of the first topics of conflict between FIDE and the brand new Grandmaster’s Association (GMA), where both Kasparov and Short cut their political teeth. The argument went that allowing rapid chess into the country club would denigrate the long history of chess and the accomplishments of its greatest players (nevermind that one of the founding fathers of the game, Paul Morphy, probably played as many games at odds as in serious tournaments).
But there was no stopping the feeling that classical chess needed some new energy. The Queen’s Gambit Declined, the opening that led Capablanca to despair about the draw death of chess, was played ad nauseam in the first Kasparov-Karpov match. It was becoming common to use an opponent’s reliance on opening preparation to denigrate their chess skill, the stronger the target the better. After the second Kasparov-Deep Blue match, Salov wrote that Kasparov was about 2550-2650 strength without his opening preparation and that “I’m sure that Kasparov realized as well as I did that the introduction of Fischer-random chess would effectively mean the end of his chess career.” Kasparov said the same of Kramnik soon after losing the title to his young rival: “At one point I wished we could change bishop and knight in the opening position, because then I had no doubts I would win the match.”
The circus was ready to help. A new tournament, Melody Amber, invited top grandmasters to demonstrate their rapid and blindfold abilities for two decades, from 1992 to 2011. Kasparov never played at Amber, but he got pulled into a few thematic exhibition games with Short when their match ended ahead of schedule. With openings pulled out of a hat, Kasparov was forced to defend the black side of a dodgy old line of the King’s Gambit:
Most importantly, when FIDE lost the classical world championship tradition in 1993, they quickly pivoted to the circus, shifting their own world championship to a huge knockout event in 1998. This new format was all circus: the element of chance, the inclusion of rapid tiebreaks, even the Las Vegas venue in 1999.
To some extent, these FIDE events democratized the chess world. It was here that we first learned the names of knockout champions Alexander Khalifman, Rustam Kasimdzhanov, and Ruslan Ponomariov. Kasparov, full of country club arrogance, called the participants chess “tourists.” Khalifman shot back that the “rating system works perfectly for players who play only in round robin closed events. I think most of them are overrated. Organizers invite same people over and over because they have the same rating and their rating stays high.”
Kasparov played two high-publicity events that can be best described as “circus-adjacent.” In his second match against Deep Blue he showed unexpected human frailty, a foreshadowing of his loss to Kramnik. Kasparov’s result in his game against the world was a happier one; it also revealed one of the most important roles of the circus in the 21st century: that technology could propel strong but not elite players to fame. In this case, the beneficiary was Irina Krush, whose detailed analysis for Team World made her the star of the match.
Part 3: “I am at full war with FIDE”
The ascension of Magnus Carlsen to co-GOAT status, the LeBron James to Kasparov’s Michael Jordan, at first seemed to be the salvation of the country club, then the final nail in its coffin. Carlsen’s accomplishments fed the desire of chess fans who wanted to see things that had never been done before. From achieving the highest rating of all time to demonstrating best endgame play since—maybe ever?—Carlsen has rewarded his fans and expanded the popularity of all forms of chess.
Because Carlsen sometimes makes it look so easy, it’s worth a reminder of how incredibly difficult it is to make the leap from prodigy to champion. Karjakin, despite his effort in the 2016 match, didn’t make it. Firouzja, hand-picked by Carlsen as his successor, has come up short in every candidates cycle he’s contested. The LeBron comparison is, I think, rather apt. Both grew up with the weight of incredible expectations on their shoulders, in a new and invasive media environment, and both lived up to their enormous potential.
That Carlsen reached such heights, with some of Kasparov’s most impressive accomplishments within his reach (he would have had to keep the title for just five more years to equal Kasparov’s 1985-2000 run), made his desire to it all up in 2023 all the more perplexing. The other top players did not believe him when he said he would step down; there was no heated race for second place in the 2022 Candidates. What’s more, Carlsen wasn’t leaving chess entirely. This was no Bobby Fischer redux, just the story of a guy who was no longer interested in being the face of the country club8.
The pandemic is the relevant context here, just as the end of the Cold War was to Kasparov and Short’s break with FIDE in 1993. When the world shut down, classic chess had to make way for its less reputable cousin: chess on the internet. Online chess in its many forms—games, puzzles, videos, live coverage—is the perfect ecosystem for the circus, which has thrived, in all its democratic splendor and zaniness. If you had the right combination of personality and chess skills, you could become an important member of the circus without the difficult climb to the rarified air of the country club. There was money to be made here outside of the old methods: teaching lessons and writing books. And Carlsen, whose instincts have always been towards showmanship and business, was ready to step in as the ringleader.
The symbiotic relationship between Carlsen and the circus is the main reason why I want to be cautious about using Kasparov’s actions in 1993 to analyze Carlsen’s current feud with FIDE. It is true that the past and the present often rhyme: when asked about the negotiations between the GMA and FIDE in 1989, Kasparov stated that “I think war is inevitable,9” just as Carlsen said on December 27, “I am at full war with FIDE.” But Kasparov’s goal was to gain political control of the world championship through the PCA, not to build a business empire that began with the Play Magnus Group and later merged with chess-dot-com. By that comparison, Carlsen’s position is far stronger than Kasparov’s was three decades ago.
This brings us more or less to the events of the past month. I’d been working through this country club-circus dichotomy in December as a potential future article, so you can probably imagine my reaction when Carlsen was kicked out of the World Rapid Championship for the most country club of infractions: not following the dress code. Ben Johnson’s analysis sums up the frustration of many members of the chess world nicely:
I have always been a huge fan of Magnus, he is an incredible player, who on his best days casts chess in a cooler light than his recent World Champion predecessors. But starting with the Niemann saga his actions have become increasingly hard to rationalize. Purported reasons aside, he has now withdrawn fron the Sinquefield Cup in a tantrum, withdrawn from the World Rapid in a tantrum, and now has rewritten the World Blitz finals rules on the fly.10
The goal of the circus is attention, and one of its weaknesses is the belief that all attention is good attention. If I may be indulged with a final LeBron comparison, this feels akin to James’s talk of retirement following a sweep at the hands of the Denver Nuggets in 2023. Like Carlsen, he successfully shifted media attention away from his opponents to himself, without regard for the coverage that they had earned by their good play and their deserved moment in the spotlight.
Johnson also references the Carlsen-Niemann affair, which strikes me as one of the other significant dangers of the circus. Cheating is endemic in online play, there’s no real way around it, and there’s no way to be one hundred percent certain if one’s opponent is cheating or not11. This helps explain the indirect nature of many of these accusations. Without conclusive proof or any hope of getting it, all that left is circumstantial evidence, to be poured over by chess sleuths who in the past might have spent their time appreciating the greatest games of the old masters.
Cheating, and accusations of cheating, are corrosive to the sport world, both in terms of present competition and storied tradition12. Despite some notable exceptions (1978 and 2006), for the most part it feels like the chess world has followed an unwritten code. You can accuse people of cheating in the circus—after all, it’s pure entertainment, not something so serious—but you shouldn’t do so in the country club. In a 2000 interview Kasparov was clear that ““With IBM I was cheated. Here [against Kramnik] I lost because I made mistakes.” Carlsen’s ambiguous accusations against Niemann at the Sinquefield Cup crossed this line. I’m not arguing that Niemann’s past admissions of cheating should have no consequences, but by letting the norms of the circus leak into the country club, Carlsen damaged both his own reputation and that of professional chess as a whole.
Part Four: The Future
Let’s close by considering three possible futures: that of the country club, the circus, and finally, a blend of the two. In one sense, the country club is suffering from an existential crisis. What good is elitism when the most elite grandmaster of all doesn’t want to participate? That the 2024 World Championship was incredibly compelling is not necessarily a signal of good health in the future. As I watched I found myself in awe of Ding’s perseverance in the face of his many struggles, but this kind of human interest story is not replicable. A lot rides on whether an unquestioned champion rises from the current cluster of super-GMs and whether this champion is interested in maintaining the history and tradition of the country club. That so many tournaments have ceded attention to rapid and blitz elements (such as Norway Chess’s tiebreakers after a draw and the St. Louis Rapid and Blitz alongside the Sinquefield Cup) is not a great sign for the future of classical chess; it needs someone to champion it.
The circus is here to stay, but I wonder how many of its competitive events will survive. Carlsen is so dominant that there’s an inevitability to every rapid or blitz tournament he plays. He’s won all five of the Champions Tours to date, and shows no sign of slowing down, his stumbles in the World Rapid notwithstanding. It’s entertaining in the moment, but the games are often of very low quality. Watching Carlsen bamboozle Wesley So like he’s the king of the chess hustlers isn’t my idea of the right direction for chess. There’s also no sign that the accusations of cheating, from Kramnik or others, will go away anytime soon.
That leaves us with Fischer-random, er, Chess960, er, Freestyle chess, which is either the last hope of competitive chess or another dead end, depending on who you’re talking to. Alex Colovic made an excellent case for it in one of his recent newsletters:
Fischer lamented that there was so much information and master games in literally all typical positions, that it has become a matter of memorisation how to play them. All the maneuvers, typical moves and plans had been figured out. Everything that he had worked so hard to figure out himself was now common knowledge….
I understood what he meant and I felt his ennui even though I realise that for me this is more abstract than it was for him, simply because his ability to execute the correct and known moves was so much higher. But even for me, when thinking of a typical position, let's say one with an IQP, sometimes I have this feeling of "here we go again, knight comes to d5, exchange some pieces, double on the d-file..." and so on. Having analysed and looked at these positions so many times, having seen a lot of grandmaster games, it really does feel like a deja-vu all over again. No real room for creativity, all you need to do is execute what you already know.13
Herein lies both the strength and weakness of Freestyle. I haven’t played normal chess as often or as well as Colovic, but when I watch the games of the top players, I too know which kinds of positions are dead, analyzed and practiced with engines until all their secrets have been revealed. But at the same time, having a baseline understanding of the major chess openings and the middlegame plans they lead to allows me to quickly make sense of any game that I’m watching or playing. Chess is already hard to understand, and Freestyle feels a step towards further complexity and difficulty that will be good for players and possibly indecipherable to fans. You’ve spent your life studying the Da Vincis and Rembrandts that cover the walls of the country club? Well, check out this Jackson Pollack that Magnus Carlsen and the Freestyle Club just hung on the wall.
There’s also the danger that the turn to Freestyle will simply recreate the mistakes of the past. I can’t imagine a more exclusive statement than “The Freestyle Chess Players Club has assembled a hand-picked group of 26 top chess players by invitation.” Apparently a classical rating of 2725 is the way to get in. The February event will also begin with a round of rapid games before 80% of the field qualifies for Freestyle played at classical time controls, a strange mixing of formats.
That said, I’m pretty excited about the idea of the top players struggling to figure out the opening on their own at slow time controls. The country club values games that are beautiful and accurate; the circus values, in an odd way, mistakes, since without mistakes there is no tension, no swings between winning and losing. The opening play of 100 years ago, 50 years ago, was hardly error free: that’s something we’ve learned to expect from the computer-infused chess of the present. The potential for Freestyle chess played at classical time controls to incorporate just the right amount of error to make the games more exciting and fun seems very promising, certainly more promising than infusion of gross errors made in rapid and blitz events. It may be a strange viewing experience, and most of us mortals will probably continue playing from the classical chess position, but the rising quality of chess broadcasts will give viewers the tools to understand it better. I know I’ll be watching.
From Salov’s New In Chess article “Going Dutch, Monicagate, and More”
From Khalifman’s New In Chess annotations to Khalifman-Leko, Linares 2000.
Interview from the New In Chess article “Kramnik Joins the Club”
I generally mean this not as the pejorative “a circus” full of chaos and controversy (although it can be that at times) but as “the circus,” which is often quite entertaining.
When I was a young chessplayer I found it hard to believe that George Koltanowski, the Dean of American Chess, was not one of the top players in the world—and never had been. His claim to fame were his blindfold simuls and knight’s tours, which did as much or more to popularize chess as anybody else in America after Fischer.
In which the opening is chosen ahead of time by the organizer.
From the Chessbase interview “Garry Kasparov: A History of Professional Chess
It’s hard to really explain how significant this decision was. It’s roughly the equivalent of LeBron James leaving the NBA to play semipro 3-on-3 basketball.
Fun fact: in that same interview Kasparov says, “I think that it is important to play in suit and tie.”
Although I was 99.9% certain after losing a game on lichess last week!
The whole steroids scandal in baseball helps explain my growing disinterest in America’s pastime, for example.
Wow. What a great analysis. This has the makings of a book?
Brilliant!