When “60 Minutes” profiled Magnus Carlsen, he was called the “world’s No. 1 player.” Many viewers assumed he’s the world champion.
He isn’t. But that may change later this year when the real champion, Vishy Anand, defends his title.
His challenger will be the winner of a tournament this month in London. Carlsen will be the favorite — as in Daniel Day-Lewis for Best Actor favorite.
Carlsen is rated nearly 100 points above the average of his London opponents. A player who outrates his opponents by this much has a better than 60 percent chance of winning each game.
“Undoubtedly Carlsen today is the world’s strongest chessplayer,” Garry Kasparov said this week. “It would be astonishing if he is not the next world champion.” He added that London was “seven Soviets against one foreigner” — because all of Carlsen’s opponents were born in the former USSR.
He called this a “Fischer nightmare” because it was the kind of event — dominated by players from one country — that Bobby Fischer opposed and led to one-on-one qualifying matches instead of tournaments. Ironically, Carlsen’s aversion to qualifying matches led him to pass up the last world championship — and delay his entry to chess Olympus.