Peter Heine Nielsen lets out a loud sigh as he contemplates his response to the difficult query he’s been requested. Gukesh or Javokhir Sindarov, who’s profitable the upcoming World Chess Championship in six months’ time?
Often some of the opinionated folks within the sport, Magnus Carlsen’s Second weighs his phrases rigorously. He offers the standard disclaimer about not figuring out the 2 gamers too properly personally. He factors out {that a} World Championship match between Viswanathan Anand and Vladimir Kramnik could be simpler for him to foretell. However predicting an end result in a match between two 20-year-olds, that too largely unfamiliar to him, may very well be difficult.
“If both participant wins by three factors, I might not be massively shocked,” Nielsen says with a shrug. “My expectations from the match are usually fairly extensive. Usually you’ve gotten an thought what’s going to occur, however right here, something may occur. They’re each very cool gamers, take loads of dangers, and have loads of confidence.”
Nielsen is a person who helped Carlsen win 4 of his World Championship titles as a second and has been with the world no 1 over a decade. Earlier than that he additionally helped Viswanathan Anand win 4 of his personal World Championship titles.
Nielsen factors out that Sindarov is a “slight favorite” due to how the previous couple of months have transpired. Gukesh has been bleeding score factors with losses at tournaments mounting up. The Uzbek challenger’s profession, in the meantime, has shot off into the stratosphere with an unbeaten Candidates marketing campaign.
“However simply half a yr in the past we weren’t speaking a lot about Sindarov,” he says, pointing on the fickle nature of kind in gamers as younger as Sindarov and Gukesh.
As Gukesh’s outcomes have suffered since he grew to become world champion, the criticism from all quarters has mounted on the boy who not too long ago turned 20. A lot of the criticism has come from former world champions like Garry Kasparov, Kramnik and Karpov, moreover Carlsen, the person who’s coached by Nielsen.
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Nielsen, nevertheless, is impressed by the best way that the Indian performed on the World Championship in 2024 to defeat Ding Liren and the best way Gukesh’s coach Grzegorz Gajewski has pushed him.
“I’m very impressed with Gukesh’s group. Gajewski may be very inventive and I believe he’s pushing Gukesh’s type very well. What they did within the World Championship match was a form of very fashionable approach of what we did with Vishy. We’d attempt to make surprises, however they (Gukesh and Gajewski) will go to a a lot larger extent and have been fairly profitable with it… It’s not a sensation he gained the World Championship,” says Nielsen.
“He and his group got here up with a really attention-grabbing technique. The preparation was, for my part, very fashionable. He took unimaginable threat by placing unimaginable stress on his opponent.”
Just lately, after defeating Gukesh at Norway Chess, Carlsen had spoken in regards to the Indian’s tendency to play aggressively in most video games slightly than making an attempt to accept attracts.
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Nielsen understands that strategy, regardless that when he was utilizing it on the World Championship, former world champions like Kramnik have been scathing of their opinions.
“You probably have the type of Gukesh, you’ll lose some video games the place you look
very unhealthy. Somebody like (Vladimir) Kramnik can criticize that Gukesh appears like a participant with no positional understanding when he loses this sport. However not less than we must always acknowledge that Gukesh is doing it on goal as a result of he takes dangers which he thinks are justified to place his opponent underneath most stress. Whilst you look silly whenever you lose, you continue to solely lose one level. So he in all probability thinks that is the precise technique and it really works for him. And it’s a brave technique. Others will perhaps do it otherwise, however I believe he was doing it on goal and he grew to become the world champion with it. One ought to recognize that not less than.”
Ask Nielsen if the world ought to make peace with the truth that the perfect participant on the earth in the intervening time will not be desirous about competing for the world championship and he factors at different sports activities the place World Cups or World Championships are sporting contests slightly than a referendum about who’s the perfect on the earth.
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“We’ll have a World Cup in soccer now, however solely typically the perfect group wins,” says Nielsen. “Chess has been extremely privileged in that sense. We had Bobby Fischer, who was the perfect when he was world champion. Boris Spassky as properly. Garry Kasparov and Magnus clearly. Vishy in his finest years was additionally after all the perfect. However for fewer years: in 2008 and 2010 he was extremely robust. 2012 after all, however maybe much less so to an extent.”
However speaking in regards to the new scenario in a world the place Carlsen refuses to struggle for the world championship, Nielsen says: “It’s one thing we’ve to get used to, and in addition it’s no massive deal in that sense. That is what sport ought to be. If we wished a mathematical system to determine who’s the perfect, the score ought to do tremendous!”
Sooner or later through the chat, he attracts a parallel to his personal profession.
“Somebody stated that I used to be the weakest participant ever to succeed in 2700,” says Nielsen. “Folks suppose that is an insult. However for me, it’s a praise. I used to be not robust sufficient to do it, however I did it anyway.”
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(The author is in Oslo on the invitation of Norway Chess)