With Magnus Carlsen winning the 21st world title of his career after being crowned the inaugural FIDE Freestyle Chess world champion, one can’t help but wonder if too many events has led to an overkill of the term ‘world championship’ in chess.
Magnus Carlsen had entered the first ever FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship as the tearaway favourite, not just because he is the greatest player of this generation by a country mile but also because of the fact that he had won the inaugural Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour last year.
And in the end, his triumph over Fabiano Caruana in the final was more or less along expected lines, even if the
Norwegian Grandmaster was made to sweat hard and nearly let the trophy slip out of his grasp at one stage.
Another trophy in Carlsen’s crowded cabinet
Carlsen thus adds another piece of silverware to a trophy cabinet that is already running short of space. After all, his victory in the FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship – formerly known as the FIDE World Fischer Random Chess Championship – is the 21st ‘World Championship’ of a career that had attained legendary status long back.
While it further underlines Carlsen’s legacy as one of the greatest to have ever played the game, if not the best, one can’t help but wonder whether chess is starting to go down the cricket route by having too many World Championships in place?
The popular proverb “too many cooks spoil the broth”, after all, can be applied in the context of sports and showpiece events. Football, for instance, has multiple noteworthy events taking place across the year, but has only one showpiece event – the FIFA World Cup – that takes place every four years.
Rugby Union might have the Six Nations Championship or the Tri Nations Series taking place in the northern and southern hemisphere respectively. But the spotlight remains on the World Cup that, like football, takes place every four years.
Several other sporting disciplines have world championships that take place on an annual or a biennial basis – from badminton hosting it every year except during the Olympics to athletics hosting it every two years. Like football and rugby though, the sanctity of the term ‘World Championship’ is maintained
And then there’s chess and cricket. In the latter’s case, the ICC World Cup was, for the longest time, the crown jewel of the sport as far as global tournaments were concerned. And while it remains the pinnacle of the sport, the introduction of the T20 World Cup in 2007 and the World Test Championship has somewhat watered down the ‘World Championship’ aspect of the sport.
Too many world championships hurting chess?
And in chess, that crown jewel status belongs to the FIDE World Championship, a tournament that has formally been in existence for nearly eight decades now, with informal matches having taken place even earlier. The Rapid and Blitz worlds are a recent phenomenon and have been jointly organised annually since 2012, but didn’t quite take the sheen off the Classical World Championship.
With the inaugural FIDE Freestyle Chess World Championship and the soon-to-be-launched
Total Chess World Championship – a joint-venture between FIDE and Norway Chess – it would be safe to state that the sport has a bit of a ‘World Championship’ overkill at the moment.
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It is of course in the interest of every sports governing body – whether FIDE, ICC or FIFA – to host more events. More events translates to more revenue – especially through the broadcast rights and advertising – and can also be seen as beneficial for players as it provides them more opportunities to prove themselves on the field.
And Carlsen, for one, will not be complaining about competing in these events, especially since he’s semi-retired from the Classical format. The trophy and a fat pay cheque is only fair for someone who has ruled chess for over a decade now.
At the same time, it is the responsibility of FIDE and other organisations to preserve the brand value of their key events. And having too many iterations of those can ultimately be detrimental for these events.
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