BENGALURU: Five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen has pushed back against the framing of D Gukesh’s upcoming World Championship match as a “title defence”, arguing that the Indian should instead be approaching it as an opportunity to gain rather than something to protect.Speaking to the reporters on the sidelines of the Global Chess League (GCL) on Thursday, Carlsen said the way Gukesh has played over the past two years means he shouldn’t see himself as merely holding onto what he already has.“The word ‘defend’ is really not a good place to begin, because in terms of how Gukesh has played for the last couple of years, he should not be in a position where he has to defend anything,” Carlsen said. “He should be in a position where he has everything to gain.”The Norwegian pointed to Gukesh’s 2024 form as evidence of his ceiling.“He has shown previously in 2024 that when things click, he has the potential to play at an extremely high level,” Carlsen remarked, adding that while public confidence in a repeat performance may be low, that only sharpens the challenge in front of him. “I don’t think a lot of people believe that he will do it now, but I think it’s even more of an interesting challenge for him to try and get back to that.”Carlsen was also blunt about the psychological dimension of the contest, suggesting the mental battle could prove just as decisive as anything on the board.“Chess is a highly psychological game, so it probably won’t take a lot to potentially place some doubts in Sindarov’s mind and some confidence for Gukesh,” he said.Asked whether Gukesh’s current form would matter once the match got underway, Carlsen, who is currently playing for the APL Pipers in the fourth season of GCL, was candid about his broader scepticism of the classical World Championship format itself, calling it a poor mechanism for identifying the strongest player.“One of the reasons why I believe it’s an extraordinarily bad way to determine the best player in the world is that you play classical, which is the most egalitarian format, and you don’t play a ton of games as well,” he explained. Even a heavily lopsided pre-match assessment, he said, rarely translates into a lopsided scoreline.“If you think a certain match is 80-20 before it starts, the likelihood is still very high that it’s going to be a close score, because chess is such a drawish game.”On the matchup itself, Carlsen was unequivocal that Gukesh holds his own against Sindarov in pure quality.“Gukesh has shown that his ceiling is on par or better than Sindarov,” he added. But given the short format, he warned that early momentum could decide everything.“If Sindarov is ahead early on, it’s probably very, very bad news for Gukesh. If Gukesh is ahead early on, he automatically becomes a significant favourite. That’s how these matches work.”
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