Magnus’s tasks

World championship match play has a stony logic, where there are no prizes for glorious endeavour. It calls to mind the old joke about two hunters who encounter a bear. One puts on his running shoes. ‘You can’t outrun a bear,’ objects his friend. ‘I don’t have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you.’ After beating Ian Nepomniachtchi in December, Magnus Carlsen reflected on his experience of winning five world championship matches. ‘I managed to stay relatively process- and passion-driven against Anand in 2013, while in the last four matches it has been all about results.’

Those months consumed by a single opponent surely take a toll on the psyche. In Carlsen’s words, ‘the negative has started to outweigh the positive, even when winning’. He took the unusual step of declaring that he might not contest another match, unless his opponent were from the next generation (the most plausible candidate being 18-year-old Alireza Firouzja, currently ranked second in the world). But would he really contemplate abdication, in case an older challenger qualifies in July 2022? I struggle to believe it.

In the meantime, Carlsen has declared a new goal: 2900. Such a lofty international rating is as daunting as Everest itself. Even for the world champion, it will demand redoubled effort against every single opponent. In January, Carlsen took first place at the elite Tata Steel tournament in Wijk aan Zee with 9.5/13. But since he already outrates all of his opponents, that commanding score was but a small step towards his target, inching him up from 2865 to 2868. The air is thin up there, and every step forward makes the next step harder still.

The former world champion Vladimir Kramnik estimated his chances at around 10 per cent, which strikes me as a fair assessment of the scale of the challenge.