There was a little shock in the chess world when Magnus Carlson, announce that no longer intense to defend his World Championship crown, Firmly preached on his head since he snatched it from Viswanathan Anand in 2013

  From the very beginning, Carlson had been suspicious of the concept as well as format of the tournament of the best chess player on the planet and after successive title defenses in a decade of total domination, another difference no longer excites him

 As to his nature, he plainly admitted as much in the decision announcing podcast with friend Magnus Barstad. I am not motivated to play another match I simply feel that I don't have a lot to gain, I don't particularly like it, and although I am sure the match would be interesting for historical reasons and all of that I don't have any inclination to play, and I will simply not play the match he said

 This was a sense of inevitability about it the moment it emerged that he would have to defend his crown against the same man who he had defeated to win the fifth title last year in Dubai, Ian Nepomniachtchi. Soon after the final the winning score of with three games to spare was the most one-sided result in a world championship final in a century, Carlson admitted to being tedious. It's been clear to me for most of the year that this world championship should be the last. It doesn't mean as much anymore as it once did, he then told the press

 The only chance he could have played the final was if his challenger was 19-year-old Iranian Alireza Firouzja, who in 2021 became the youngest in chess history to achieve a 2800 rating. The prospect of dueling a young challenger excited him, but his ouster not just reduced but minimized his prospects of a title defense. The games in the candidate's tournament didn't impress him much either. Frankly, I don't think anybody played particularly well so far, he had then said

 Moreover, the effort in the build-up to the final seemed to outweigh the joy of playing the final and defending the crone. The preparations are long and tedious, from picking the second to analyzing the opponent, for example, in the last year's final, he spent three months with his second on the opening alone

The moment you know who your opponent is, he will always be there at the back of your mind. Every match and every tournament would be played with the final in mind. At least subconsciously, you are trying to beat the guy in the final year in every game. That draining after a point, especially when you have to do it year after year, he had told Barstad in a podcast

 Not a chess nerd

  Carlson is not the archetypal chess nerd, who is wedded to the board, either. He has diverse interest from football to fantasy football and poker to panel tennis. He is a businessman whose Business venture play Magnus has a market capitalization of about $115 million and is the only publicly traded chair company e in the world

 Besides, he felt that the format was long and dreary best of 14 games with the rapid and blitz tiebreaks if the scores are level after 12 games. The Norwegian, according to rumors, wanted the best of three sets of four classical games each, where rapid and blitz would follow at 2-2. A Russian newspaper claimed he was holding the final as a hostage to revise the format, an allegation that both FIDE and Carlson denied

 But Carlson was always critical of the world championship format. 2 years before he became the world champion, he dropped out of the candidate because he felt the system was flawed. In a letter to FIDE, he wrote: The ongoing 2008 to 2012 cycle does not represent a system sufficiently modern and fair, to provide the motivation I need to go through a lengthy process of preparation and matches and to perform at my best