Norwegian grandmaster Magnus Carlsen is playing one chess game against 140,000 people around the world in a massive online match that might end in a draw in the next few days.
Called “Magnus Carlsen vs. The World,” the match started on April 4 on Chess.com, the largest chess website. It is the first online freestyle game with a world champion.
Chess.com had expected Carlsen to win easily, but Team World might be able to get a draw if they check Carlsen’s king three times.
“Right now we’re heading towards a draw by perpetual check,” Carlsen said in a statement on Friday. “I felt that I was a little bit better, early in the opening, then maybe I didn’t play that precisely. Honestly, since then, they haven’t given me a single chance. So now, I think, it’s just heading towards the draw.”
He added: “Overall, ‘the world’ has played very, very sound chess from the start. Maybe not going for most enterprising options, but kind of keeping it more in vein with normal chess — which isn’t always the best strategy, but it worked out well this time.”
In this freestyle match, the bishops, knights, rooks, queen, and king are placed randomly before the game begins, while the pawns stay in their usual positions. Freestyle chess is liked because it lets players be more creative and not rely on memorizing openings.
Team World votes on each move, and each side has 24 hours to make their decision. Carlsen is using the white pieces.
“For most of the world, it is their first chance to say they’ve played a chess game against Magnus Carlsen,” said Mike Klein, a senior journalist at Chess.com, to The Associated Press. “I think ‘the world’ is going to be kind of tickled pink to be able to say, ‘I was part of a draw against Magnus Carlsen.’”
Klein once played and lost to Carlsen twice in quick matches in a hotel bar when Carlsen was looking to pass the time during a world championship break.
“He beat me twice without much effort, so I would have happily signed up for a draw in any of those games,” Klein said.
Magnus Carlsen at an eventCelebrity status
Carlsen became a grandmaster at 13 and has a level of fame few chess players reach.
Now 34, he became the world’s top-ranked player in 2011 and has won five World Championships. In 2014, he reached a record-high chess rating of 2882 and has held the number one spot for over ten years.
Last year, he made news after quitting a New York tournament because he didn’t want to change out of his jeans. He later paid a $200 fine, and organizers relaxed the dress code.
Carlsen then auctioned off the jeans for charity and gave the $36,100 from the winning bid to Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, a national youth-mentoring group that works in 5,000 local communities.
Grandmaster vs. The World
This is the third record-setting online game called “vs. The World.”
In 1999, Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov played more than 50,000 people on the Microsoft Network.
A few strong players helped guide the moves for Team World, but Kasparov won after four months and called it “the greatest game in the history of chess.”
Klein was teaching chess at a summer camp then.
“We would start class each day by checking out Kasparov’s next move and talking about it and spending a few minutes each morning deciding what we’d reply,” Klein said.
Indian grandmaster Viswanathan Anand won his “vs. The World” match last year against nearly 70,000 people on Chess.com.
The aim of the Carlsen match was to go beyond Anand’s 70,000-player record, and it ended up doubling that number.
