Carlsen’s spectre looms as Ding and Nepomniachtchi launch title match

A ll the trappings of a world championship match are in place: the headline-grabbing prize fund, the throngs of working media and cocktail-sipping VIPs, the sound-proof studio couched inside a sleek purpose-built playing hall. The only thing that’s missing is the sport’s best player and most compelling draw.

Magnus Carlsen, considered the greatest chess player on the planet even before rising to the No 1 ranking more than a decade ago and winning the title from Viswanathan Anand, will be enjoying a skiing holiday in the French Alps when Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi and China’s Ding Liren kick off their €2m ($2.2m) world title match on Sunday at the St Regis Astana Hotel in the Kazakh capital.

The 32-year-old Norwegian’s name was mentioned only once on Saturday when Nepomniachtchi and Ding met for a final press conference ahead of their best-of-14-games showdown. But the spectre of Carlsen continues to loom over a title match that has been criticized as “amputated” due to his absence, calling into question the legitimacy of the title at stake.

“I was surprised,” Ding said Saturday during the conciliatory, tight-lipped 45-minute affair. “Magnus not playing has surprised me a little bit.”

Carlsen bolstered his claim as the greatest player of this or any other era back in 2021, when he crushed Nepomniachtchi in Dubai in his fourth title defense, one short of the suddenly imperilled all-time record of five. His winning score of 7½-3½ with three games to spare was the most lopsided result in a world title match since José Raúl Capablanca’s triumph over Emanuel Lasker exactly 100 years before in Havana.

But he floated the idea of giving up his title almost immediately afterward, citing a lack of motivation as the primary