‘Gukesh is in no position to defend anything’: Magnus Carlsen on World Chess Championship clash with Javokhir Sindarov

Magnus Carlsen in the Gukesh vs Javokhir Sindarov World Championship match BENGALURU: Five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen has backed away from framing D Gukesh’s upcoming World Championship match as a “title defence”, saying the Indian should approach it as an opportunity to win rather than something to protect.Speaking to 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 be seen as just hanging on to what he already has.“The word ‘defend’ is really not a good place to start because the way Gukesh has played the last couple of years, he shouldn’t be in a position where he has to defend anything,” Carlsen said. “He should be in a position to get everything.The Norwegian pointed to Gukesh’s 2024 form as evidence of his ceiling.“He already showed in 2024 that when things click, he has the potential to play at an extremely high level,” Carlsen noted, adding that while public confidence in a repeat may be low, that only sharpens the challenge ahead. “I don’t think a lot of people believe he’s going to do it now, but I think it’s an even more interesting challenge for him to try and get back to it.”Carlsen also spoke openly about the psychological dimension of the competition, suggesting that the mental battle could be as crucial as anything else on the board.“Chess is a highly psychological game, so it probably won’t take much to potentially put some doubt in Sindarov’s mind and some confidence in Gukesh,” he said.When asked if Gukesh’s current form will matter when the match starts, Carlsen, who is currently playing for the APL Pipers in the fourth season of the GCL, was candid about his wider skepticism about the classic World Cup format itself, calling it the wrong mechanism to identify the strongest player.“One of the reasons I think it’s an extremely poor way to determine the best player in the world is because you’re playing classics, which is the most egalitarian format, and you’re also not playing a lot of games,” he explained. Even a heavily skewed pregame rating rarely translates into a skewed score, he said.“If you think a certain match is 80-20 before it starts, there is still a very high probability that it will be a close score because chess is such a draw game.”In the match itself, Carlsen was clear that Gukesh handled Sindarov with pure quality.“Gukesh has shown that his ceiling is equal to or better than Sindarov’s,” he added. But given the short format, he warned that early momentum could decide everything.“If Sindarov leads early, that’s probably very, very bad news for Gukesh. If Gukesh is ahead early, he automatically becomes a significant favorite. That’s how these matches work.”