Fischer's Ennui and The Carlsen Scandals

Happy New Year my dear readers! I hope you had a great start of 2025 and I also hope it’s just a beginning of an amazing year ahead!

Thank you for reading my newsletter and for your support!

I will start this year with a post about something old and something new.

As you probably know, Bobby Fischer created FischerRandom because he became disillusioned by what he called the "old" chess.

After 20 years of inactivity Fischer discovered that the amount of chess information had become so big that he couldn't possibly absorb and process it, at least not in his usual ways. This was not only about the openings and I think his disillusion was more about the other aspects of the game.

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.

Back in the 1990s, when Fischer was claiming these things, I didn't pay particular attention. However, in the past several years I must admit that I felt them.

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 abitlity 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.

I could understand that for a player of his level this feeling of "executing what you already know" expands to pretty much everything because, as he said, there are good examples for everything you need to learn. With his perfect execution, there was no room for creativity, making chess literally a memory contest.

So Bobby went and invented another version of chess where he successfully eliminated all of the problems mentioned above. Some harmony was undoubtedly lost, but perhaps that's the price it was necessary to pay for a clean sweep for chess.

I am not surprised that all elite grandmasters like FischerRandom. They must feel the same like he did, if not worse - after all it's more than 30 years since Fischer said those things and invented his game and in the meantime the databases, the tablebases and the engines completely changed chess. Opening study is a huge memory contest today and the players just want to feel free and play, not to overburden themselves before each game with hours of memorisation. Kramnik even tried to go Fischer's way and invented his no-castling chess.

Fischer was ahead of his time in realising the problem chess faced with the explosion of available information. However, it's a big question whether the chess players will ever dare to give up the safety blanket of their knowledge and venture into the unknown of Bobby's game.

He probably could never imagine it, but Bobby’s game has established itself at the core of the recent scandal at the World Rapid Championship in New York. Magnus Carlsen abandoned the event after refusing to change his jeans between the rounds, in order to respect the dress code for the event.

It wasn’t about the jeans, though. Previously Carlsen and Nakamura, just to name the most famous ones, together with Mr. Jan Buettner, a German entrepreneur, launched Freestyle Chess Tour (I am puzzled why people refuse to call it FischerRandom, if only to pay tribute to the man) with an attempt to make it a World Championship.

However, only FIDE is allowed to recognise World Championships. So there have been discussions, perceived (or not) threats and various comments, with Nakamura openly stating that if forced to choose, he would choose Freestyle over FIDE.

The jeans scandal only hastened what Carlsen wanted to do anyway - to break away from FIDE. Others will follow him, though those will be only from the elite - no other chess player can afford it, and, besides, they don’t want non-elite players in the Freestyle Tour.

Curiously enough, there was an unexpected U-turn and some heavy behind-the-doors politics involved at Carlsen’s return for the blitz championship, only for him to show his true power by blackmailing FIDE in the final with “infinite draws” if they didn’t accept his proposal to share the blitz World Champion title with opponent-turned-buddy Nepomniachtchi. Personally, I think they should have let them make these infinite draws and make fools of themselves in front of the world audience, but politics doesn’t work like that. So, (un)surprisingly, FIDE caved in and they accepted the humiliation, making mockery of the game and the event, much to Carlsen’s delight.

Fischer also played a World Championship outside of FIDE in 1992. It got him in a lot of trouble. Carlsen & Co. won’t get in trouble, but it’s curious that the game that Fischer invented to revolutionise chess, now serves another purpose - to get away from FIDE and give the (elite) players their complete independence, something that Fischer also wanted.

P.S. Today’s video is my New Year’s wish to you. I hope you like it - if it comes true, we will all have smooth sailing in 2025!