Magnus Carlsen will not defend his World Chess Championship title in 2023

Magnus Carlsen says he will not defend his World Chess Championship title in 2023 against Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi. The five-times winner is not retiring but promising “to be the best in the world” even if that means taking no part in chess’s showpiece event.

China’s world No 2, Ding Liren, will now step up and face Nepomniachtchi, who Carlsen beat last year in Dubai.

The 31-year-old Norwegian grandmaster, who has spent over a decade as the top-ranked player in the world, said in a podcast for his sponsor Unibet: “I am not motivated to play another match. I simply feel that I don’t have a lot to gain, I don’t particularly like it, and although I’m sure a match would be interesting for historical reasons and all of that, I don’t have any inclination to play and I will simply not play the match.

“Ultimately the conclusion stands, one that I’m pretty comfortable with, one that I’ve thought a lot about for a long time now, I would say more than a year … since long before the last match” [in which he beat Nepomniachtchi without losing a game].

“And I’ve spoken to people in my team, I’ve spoken to [governing body] Fide, I spoke to Ian as well. And the conclusion is, it’s very simple, that I am not motivated to play another match.”

Bobby Fischer in 1975 was the last grandmaster to give up the title rather than defend it in a match. However, Carlsen’s decision is more like in 1993 when Garry Kasparov broke from Fide, and for more than a decade there were rival world champions.