IN THE just concluded Norway Chess 2026 tournament Magnus Carlsen, the world’s strongest chess player, lost four classical time-control games as opposed to winning only three. In classical standings, he came number five and second to the last.
I see there have been a lot of discussions in the internet as to ‘WHAT’S HAPPENING TO CARLSEN!’
I have a hypothesis on this too. I’ve perused through all of Carlsen’s losses since his climb to the top. He is almost invincible in ‘simple positions’. His assessment or judgment in these types of positions is one of the best in history.
But in my opinion, he is much more vulnerable in ‘complicated tactical’ positions. He does miss concrete tactics regularly. Most of his losses have occurred in such positions.
Recently, in Norway Chess 2026 tournament and in the previous one, TePe Sigeman & Co Tournament Malmo Sweden, Carlsen has played into ‘complicated tactical’ positions. In my opinion he was lucky not to lose more games in the Sweden tournament.
In this respect in such positions, players like Kasparov and Alekhine (and fascinatingly Capablanca too, since this guy barely made losing errors even in the most bizarre complicated tactically difficult positions, if he got into them; and the same could be said of Fischer in his prime) in my opinion are superior to Carlsen. However, because of the narcissistic generation syndrome (the tendency to think that everything newest or ‘modern’ is always better than everything in the more distant past), people tend to forget about just how strong past Champions were too. For the present generation Carlsen is Greatest Of All Time (GOAT) and ‘so there!’.
Many even forget about the chess monster that Garry Kasparov was, even if it wasn’t that long ago. Kasparov had a better record than Carlsen in most important criteria for chess – World Championship matches, tournament record, team record, ELO rating point gap between him as World number one and the World number two.
Regarding World Championship matches, Carlsen won only three World Championship matches in classical time-control games, two against Viswanathan Anand and one against Ian Nepomniachtchi. Kasparov won three World Championship matches against Anatoly Karpov, one against Nigel Short and one against Anand. Moreover, Karpov was not only tough; he was a real genuine chess genius too.
I’ve said this before. Carlsen is alone, in that there isn’t a Kasparov or Karpov in obvious sight. I predicted he would have a long ‘undisputed’ reign. Then he abdicated for what seems to be understandable reasons.
There have only been two eras wherein chess geniuses coincided in the same era. One was the Karpov-Kasparov era. The other was the Lasker-Capablanca-Alekhine era. Most other times where first-among-equals eras.
Had Carlsen been active in the Karpov-Kasparov and Lasker-Capablanca-Alekhine eras, or even in the Fischer-at-his-prime era (1967 to 1972), could he have become World Champion? In my opinion probably only for short while or never at all.
I’ve commented on this vulnerability before. That Carlsen will probably do better by playing into “simple positions”. (Send comments and suggestions to mabuhibisaya2017@gmail.com)/PN
