BERLIN (AP) — Norwegian grandmaster Magnus Carlsen is playing a single game of chess against 140,000 people worldwide in a mega-match that could overturn expectations by ending in a draw in the next few days.
Billed as “Magnus Carlsen vs. The World,” the online match began April 4 on Chess.com, the world’s largest chess website, and is the first-ever online freestyle game to feature a world champion.
While Chess.com had predicted Carlsen would win by a wide margin, his Team World opposition could force a draw if it checks Carlsen’s king three times.
“Right now we’re heading towards a draw by perpetual check,” Carlsen said in a statement on Friday. “I felt that I was a little bit better, early in the opening, then maybe I didn’t play that precisely. Honestly, since then, they haven’t given me a single chance. So now, I think, it’s just heading towards the draw.”
He added: “Overall, ‘the world’ has played very, very sound chess from the start. Maybe not going for most enterprising options, but kind of keeping it more in vein with normal chess — which isn’t always the best strategy, but it worked out well this time.”
As a freestyle match, the bishops, knights, rooks, queen and king are randomly shuffled around the board while the pawns remain in their usual spots. Freestyle chess is popular because it allows players to be more creative and avoid memorization.
Team World votes on each move and each side has 24 hours to make their play. Carlsen is playing the white pieces.
“For most of the world, it is their first chance to say they’ve played a chess game against Magnus Carlsen,” Mike Klein, senior journalist with Chess.com, told The Associated Press. “I think ‘the world’ is going to be kind of tickled pink to be able to say, ‘I was part of a draw against Magnus Carlsen.’”
Klein has played, and lost, to Carlsen twice in blitz matches in a hotel bar when the Norwegian was bored during some downtime in a world championship.
“He beat me twice without much effort, so I would have happily signed up for a draw in any of those games,” Klein said.
Celebrity status
A grandmaster at 13, Carlsen enjoys celebrity status that few other chess players have.
The 34-year-old became the world’s top-ranked player in 2011 and has won five World Championships. He achieved the highest-ever chess rating of 2882 in 2014 and has remained the undisputed world number one for more than a decade.
Last year, he garnered headlines for quitting a tournament in New York after refusing to change out of the jeans he wore to the competition. He later accepted a $200 fine and officials agreed to loosen the dress code.
Carlsen auctioned the jeans off for charity and donated the winning $36,100 bid to Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, a national youth-mentoring charity that carries out its mission through local chapters across 5,000 communities nationwide.
Grandmaster vs. The World
This is the third “vs. The World” record-setting online game.
In 1999, Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov played against more than 50,000 people on the Microsoft Network.
A few top-ranked players helped steer the world’s moves, but Kasparov won after four months and hailed it as “the greatest game in the history of chess.”
Klein was a summer camp chess teacher at the time.
“We would start class each day by checking out Kasparov’s next move and talking about it and spending a few minutes each morning deciding what we’d reply,” Klein said.
Indian grandmaster Viswanathan Anand won his “vs. The World” match last year against nearly 70,000 players on Chess.com.
The goal of the Carlsen match was to break Anand’s 70,000-player mark, and ended up doubling it.