Magnus Carlsen’s chess résumé is unmatched. The five-time world champion is a prodigy-turned-grandmaster who long ago burned through all of the game’s superlatives. He has posted the highest chess rating ever, topping greats such as Garry Kasparov and Bobby Fischer, and he once went more than two years without a loss in the classic format — a streak of 125 games. He can trounce the top speed players in less than a minute of dizzying bullet chess, and he dismantled a Russian grandmaster in an eight-hour, 136-move marathon in the classical format. He became the world’s top-rated player at 19.
Now, at 32, Carlsen is scouring for new challenges. Earlier this year, he decided not to defend his world title, saying he simply wasn’t enjoying the drawn-out classical format at the world championships.
“Now I’m probably more concerned about going for events that I find interesting,” he said in a recent interview.
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His hunt for a new challenge has brought him to a new venture that seeks to rethink how chess is contested, presented and followed. The Global Chess League envisions chess as a team sport, and Carlsen is a cornerstone of the new project.
The two-week event begins Wednesday in Dubai, where Carlsen leads a six-person team called the SG Alpine Warriors into an inaugural season. For Jagdish Mitra, chair of the league’s board, launching an innovative venture involving a centuries-old game hinged on recruiting the world’s top players.
“You don’t compromise on talent. … Magnus — there’s no bigger name than him in the game of chess,” Mitra said. “It’s absolutely critical. It’s like having the most popular, most visible and the most sought-after chess player to come and play for you.”
Backed by Tech Mahindra, a deep-pocketed Indian IT company, the league will offer salaries that organizers say will help make professional playing careers more sustainable. Exact figures have not been released.
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Carlsen is one of six “icons” tapped to lead a team. He was searching for something new and said he was intrigued by what the league was trying to do: take a board game known all over the world and package it in a team-based format that’s popular with traditional sports fans.
“It’s something that hasn’t really been done before,” Carlsen said.
In sports such as golf and swimming, there has been a push in recent years to transform an individual athletic pursuit into a professionalized team endeavor. But the chess league looked more to the esports blueprint to settle on a format and presentation. Mitra called chess the “original esport” and said the league seeks to make the complex game accessible, fast-paced and viewer-friendly, especially for a younger audience.
“If you have spelling bees and poker games and esports — three followed and visible sports — why not something like chess,” he said, “which has such wider coverage — 600 million people who play it? We got to make it simple, we got to make the commentary easier to follow, we got to make it a television sport.”
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The six teams will include some of the world’s top male and female players. Teams will compete head-to-head in the game’s rapid format — each player is allotted 15 minutes per game — with six boards played simultaneously. Teams will accrue points in a double round-robin format with the top two squads squaring off for the league championship July 2.
Each team is composed of at least two men, two women and one “prodigy” who is 21 or younger. Each team also features one designated “icon” — grandmasters such as Ding Liren, the reigning world chess champion, and Viswanathan Anand, the famed Indian grandmaster.
Carlsen’s team includes three young Indian grandmasters — 17-year-old Gukesh D, Praggnanandhaa R, also 17, and Arjun Erigaisi, 19.
“I especially like being on a team with younger players. That excites me a lot,” Carlsen said. “Any questions they have, I’m happy to answer, to try and inspire them for the future. Hopefully, I can learn a thing or two from them as well.”
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In the long term, Carlsen acknowledges that “there are obviously questions about my future in chess,” but for now, he has the luxury of being able to pick and choose his events and tournaments.
He is still the reigning world champion in rapid and blitz formats and will be the game’s biggest draw for as long as he chooses to compete at the highest level. Some tournaments might not interest him as much as when he was a young prodigy making global headlines, but he’s hopeful new events, like the new team-based league, can make chess more exciting — for him and for a global audience.
“This is definitely something new. In terms of what there is — what exists to win — I’ve generally won most of them,” he said with a chuckle. “Going to have to keep inventing new things to get new challenges.”
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