When a teenage Magnus Carlsen skipped the Candidates and wrote an open letter to FIDE chief with suggestions for changes

Carlsen eventually played in the 2013 London Candidates tournament, which he won on the final day in a thrilling race to the finish line.

In about 10 days’ time, the Candidates tournament, the second-most chess tournament in the world, will take centrestage in the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. The current edition will see 16 of the top players in the world compete in the twin Candidates events, side by side, with the eight men hoping to secure a world championship fight against D Gukesh while the eight women are jockeying to secure a women’s world championship clash with Ju Wenjun.

There is a bit of a cloud over the Candidates this year, thanks to the war raging in the Middle East with Israel and the USA fighting Iran, and the latter responding by attacking its Middle Eastern neighbours like Qatar and Saudi Arabia. An attack on a British air force base on the island of Cyprus has also led to Koneru Humpy talking about boycotting the event.

This would not be the first time the Candidates sees a high-profile player withdraw from the event. The world might remember Magnus Carlsen’s decision to not defend his world championship crown in 2023. But before that, a teenage Carlsen had also backed out of playing in the Candidates, which was held in a knockout format back then.

In fact, Carlsen had penned a long open letter to the then FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and the World Championship Committee detailing his issues with the world championship cycle that made it “less than satisfactory”. Among the issues that had irked Carlsen were the reigning world champion having “privileges” as the world champion. He was unhappy that while the world champion gets to play in the next world championship each time, others have to come through a gruelling qualification cycle—or the Candidates tournaments—just to earn a shot, which thereby hands an advantage to the reigning world champion.

“Reigning champion privileges, the long (five-year) span of the cycle, changes made during the cycle resulting in a new format (Candidates) that no World Champion has had to go through since Kasparov, puzzling ranking criteria as well as the shallow ceaseless match-after-match concept are all less than satisfactory in my opinion,” Carlsen wrote in the open letter.

The 19-year-old Carlsen had then gone on to give FIDE a few suggestions on how to improve the world championship cycle.

“In my opinion privileges should, in general, be abolished and a future World Championship model should be based on a fair fight between the best players in the World, on equal terms. This should apply also to the winner of the previous World Championship, and especially so when there are several players at approximately the same level in the world elite. (Why should one player have one out of two tickets to the final to the detriment of all remaining players in the world? Imagine that the winner of the 2010 Football World Cup would be directly qualified to the 2014 World Cup final while all the rest of the teams would have to fight for the other spot),” Carlsen wrote in the letter that was published by Chessbase India.

Back in the day, India’s Viswanathan Anand used to be the world champion. Carlsen also explained that his open letter was not a dig at Anand.

“The proposal to abolish the privileges of the World Champion in the future is not in any way meant as criticism of, or an attack on, the reigning World Champion Viswanathan Anand, who is a worthy World Champion, a role model chess colleague and a highly esteemed opponent,” Carlsen wrote.

Here’s a look at the full letter written by Carlsen to FIDE:

It must be noted that Carlsen eventually played in the 2013 London Candidates tournament, which he won on the final day in a thrilling race to the finish line. It would be the only Candidates he competed in.

In about 10 days’ time, the Candidates tournament, the second-most chess tournament in the world, will take centrestage in the Mediterranean island of Cyprus. The current edition will see 16 of the top players in the world compete in the twin Candidates events, side by side, with the eight men hoping to secure a world championship fight against D Gukesh while the eight women are jockeying to secure a women’s world championship clash with Ju Wenjun.

There is a bit of a cloud over the Candidates this year, thanks to the war raging in the Middle East with Israel and the USA fighting Iran, and the latter responding by attacking its Middle Eastern neighbours like Qatar and Saudi Arabia. An attack on a British air force base on the island of Cyprus has also led to Koneru Humpy talking about boycotting the event.

This would not be the first time the Candidates sees a high-profile player withdraw from the event. The world might remember Magnus Carlsen’s decision to not defend his world championship crown in 2023. But before that, a teenage Carlsen had also backed out of playing in the Candidates, which was held in a knockout format back then.

In fact, Carlsen had penned a long open letter to the then FIDE president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and the World Championship Committee detailing his issues with the world championship cycle that made it “less than satisfactory”. Among the issues that had irked Carlsen were the reigning world champion having “privileges” as the world champion. He was unhappy that while the world champion gets to play in the next world championship each time, others have to come through a gruelling qualification cycle—or the Candidates tournaments—just to earn a shot, which thereby hands an advantage to the reigning world champion.

“Reigning champion privileges, the long (five-year) span of the cycle, changes made during the cycle resulting in a new format (Candidates) that no World Champion has had to go through since Kasparov, puzzling ranking criteria as well as the shallow ceaseless match-after-match concept are all less than satisfactory in my opinion,” Carlsen wrote in the open letter.

The 19-year-old Carlsen had then gone on to give FIDE a few suggestions on how to improve the world championship cycle.

“In my opinion privileges should, in general, be abolished and a future World Championship model should be based on a fair fight between the best players in the World, on equal terms. This should apply also to the winner of the previous World Championship, and especially so when there are several players at approximately the same level in the world elite. (Why should one player have one out of two tickets to the final to the detriment of all remaining players in the world? Imagine that the winner of the 2010 Football World Cup would be directly qualified to the 2014 World Cup final while all the rest of the teams would have to fight for the other spot),” Carlsen wrote in the letter that was published by Chessbase India.

Back in the day, India’s Viswanathan Anand used to be the world champion. Carlsen also explained that his open letter was not a dig at Anand.

“The proposal to abolish the privileges of the World Champion in the future is not in any way meant as criticism of, or an attack on, the reigning World Champion Viswanathan Anand, who is a worthy World Champion, a role model chess colleague and a highly esteemed opponent,” Carlsen wrote.

Here’s a look at the full letter written by Carlsen to FIDE:

It must be noted that Carlsen eventually played in the 2013 London Candidates tournament, which he won on the final day in a thrilling race to the finish line. It would be the only Candidates he competed in.