As Carlsen said in a post on X, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. This time what he does is play extremely good chess like no other. The world has recently watched him claim the Freestyle Chess Championship for the 7th time and that is right. I am talking about 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and now 7. This is an event of chess960 where the pieces are placed on random squares, rather the officers, that is the pieces at the back of the pawns.
For those who were debating Magnus is only good at standard chess due to his vast memory of some many games. Well this is another prove to inform you all Carlsen is the G.O.A.T. when it comes to chess. Anything that involves the 64 squares, just count the Norwegian involved. As the second name for chess960, which is Fischer's random describes it, it is a style of chess that rewards pure chess over memorization. In this style you have to create something out of random nothing and forget about whatever book lines you must have cramped in the past.
Right from the preliminary stage of the tournament, Carlsen exhibited greatness against renowned super grandmaster just like him. He chose to go for a stable win through grinding of little advantages like activity with his pieces, open squares and positional play over flashy wins. Although it is quite hard to get this flashy wins against other opponents as the playing field was made up 2700 rated players, the second highest chess rating ever achieved by chess players right after the 2800 bracket. Only 15 players in the world have attained 2800 rating, namely Garry Kasparov, Fabiano Caruana, Levon Aronian, Viswanathan Anand, Vladimir Kramnik, Veselin Topalov, Hikaru Nakamura, Ding Liren, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Wesley So, Sergey Karjakin, Alireza Firouzja, and Arjun Erigaisi.
Now you can see how tough it is in the world of chess and then there is a single man that has dominated in every format. Personally, I wonder how strong Carlsen will be in crazyhouse, also called bughouse. I am sure it would not take him much time to get a hand of how this variant works. This is the only variant of chess that I have not seen the G.O.A.T. play.
While for the Freestyle Chess Championship, Carlsen was in strong form despite the setback he encountered in his game against Arjun Erigaisi. I believe that was the only game Carlsen lost. Although Erigaisi played well to take him down in the tournament, he was not able to make it to the finals due to other losses to other players. On the other hand Magnus regained his form and displayed a grand style of play from the semi finals down to the finals. It was obvious nothing was going to stop him in the brilliant form he was in.
Off the chess board, there was some love story with Magnus and his wife after his victory. I am amazed by how excited Magnus gets every time he wins the event. Like it is your 7th time and it still makes you happy. This speaks to how much the man loves the game of chess.
There is no stopping for Magnus Carlsen and I look forward to following his games at the Norway chess championship. It is a classical tournament and in the champion's country.
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