Will Magnus Play Another World Championship Match?
The candidate tournament is nearing and Magnus might be abdicating. On the 19th of April Chess24 reported:
“Magnus Carlsen says he is still “not 100 percent certain” he will give up his title, but reiterates that it's unlikely he will play another match, adding more details on the reasons.”1
Now the whole chess world is guessing if Magnus will play for the WC title. Is he motivated? Does he dislike the long training camps so much that he won’t play another match?
At the Oslo Meltwater tournament, he definitely hasn’t looked pumped and excited about chess and during a game, he looked like he was sleeping..
Adding to the story several unusual blunders have occurred in his games like this one against Mamedyarov:
When I started to think about the plausible outcomes I was reminded of Joesph Campbell’s classic book ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ (1949).
In the book, Campbell describes the common template for hero stories and tales. A classic hero tale is divided into 3 parts. The departure, the initiation, and the return.
And should we place the world championship cycle into this hero narrative we are in the departure phase. Carlsen hasn’t yet committed to going on the hero’s journey to defend his world championship.
In Campbell’s model, an essential part of the departure phase is the refusal of the call. The hero has been asked to go on this dangerous journey and has to leave the safety of his everyday life.
”Refusal is essentially a refusal to give up what one takes to be one’s own interest. The future is regarded not in terms of an unremitting series of deaths and rebirths, but as though one’s present system of ideals, virtues, goals, and advantages were to be fixed and made secure.” 2
A classic example of the refusal of the call is Achilles who refuses to fight for Agamemnon and decides to set sail to go home. You might remember this scene from Troy (2004).
First, when Achilles finds out Patroclus is dead he decides to go to war again.
In chess history, Bobby Fischer caused immense speculations if he would play his match against Spassky in 1972 due to the price money. And finally, when the match started he was close to abandoning it due to the television camera making noises.
Fischer had booked a flight back home after starting the match 0-2 (forfeiting the second game). Kissinger, President Nixon's closest adviser on foreign policy, urged Fischer to play on against the Soviets and last-minute Fischer changed his mind.
Fischer never managed to answer the call when it was time to defend his title and did not play the match against Karpov.
Campbell writes that hero’s often got a second chance to answer the call, but if the second call also is declined the hero might suffer from it:
Whatever house he [who has refused the Call] builds, it will be a house of death: a labyrinth of cyclopean walls to hide from him his Minotaur. All he can do is create new problems for himself and await the gradual approach of his disintegration.
This will hopefully not be the fate for Carlsen, but saying no to an adventure might also cause problems. Carlsen must still see many advantages in being the world champion, both for his self-understanding and also for the whole Play Magnus Group which is based around the Magnus Carlsen brand.
To finish this newsletter let’s see one more classic example of the refusal of the call from ‘The Hobbit’.
/Martin
The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 1949, p. 59-60