Why the 2024 World Chess Championship may be the biggest one yet

One of the world’s biggest sporting competitions will pit a teen phenom from India against a soft-spoken assassin from China — but it will be missing the GOAT from Norway.

The 2024 World Chess Championship is set to kick off this week, a showdown between 18-year-old Gukesh Dommaraju of India and reigning champion Ding Liren of China. And while it is still considered the game’s marquee event, the absence of Norway’s Magnus Carlsen, the five-time champion who declined to defend his title in 2022, looms large.

Grandmaster David Howell, a close friend of Carlsen’s who is also one of the official match commentators in Singapore, believes the world championship still holds a special place in the chess world, but said this year is unique.

“For a long time, it’s been the one thing that defines what has been otherwise quite a disorganized tournament system,” Howell said. “Normally, the world championship is very successful at finding and celebrating the best player in the world. It’s still got a lot of prestige, but this year it’s a bit of a strange one.”

In some ways, this should be the biggest world championship yet.

A chess boom during the pandemic has made the game more popular than ever, but that surge of interest has mainly been felt online. Chess.com now boasts 190 million users worldwide, up from 51 million in January 2020. The world’s biggest chess platform told NBC News that 1 in 10 Americans have an account. Chess.com is also busy organizing its own money-spinning tournaments, slowly encroaching on the game’s governing body, the International Chess Federation, also known as FIDE.

That’s led to a growing discussion over whether the championship format — 14 games that often last more than three hours each — still works for a game that is often embracing quicker matches.

“There’s a big debate over whether it needs to be modernized, or whether it’s still the most efficient way of finding the best player in the world,” Howell said. “I still think it does a fantastic job at that. It’s no one’s fault that the world No. 1 has stepped aside.”

Carlsen, who has dominated the chess world for over a decade, vacated the title in 2022, citing a lack of motivation. While Ding technically succeeded Carlsen, the Norwegian remains the consensus best player in the world and the sport’s most marketable figure.

Known as the “GOAT” (a popular acronym for the “greatest of all time”), Carlsen has been a towering presence in chess since his teenage years. His last title defense, a dramatic series against Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi in 2021, drew record-breaking online audiences. At the height of the chess boom fueled by the pandemic and Netflix’s “The Queen’s Gambit,” Carlsen seemed poised to turn chess into a mainstream spectator sport.

However, in 2022 Carlsen’s image took a hit when he was drawn into a cheating scandal. Carlsen implied grandmaster Hans Niemann, then a teenager and one of the game’s rising young stars, cheated when he beat him at the Sinquefield Cup. It led to a $100 million lawsuit before the players settled in August last year and said they had moved on from their rift. The terms of the settlement have not been made public.

Howell noted that it’s not particularly rare for the world chess championship to be without the game’s top player.

“That’s happened throughout history,” he said. “There have been several cases of a player being world champion, but maybe not being the strongest on paper. Thinking back, there was Max Euwe, maybe [Vasily] Smyslov, [Tigran] Petrosian and then [Vladimir] Kramnik later on. They weren’t the No. 1 at the time, but they were the world champion.”

Beyond Carlsen’s absence, the game of chess and its upcoming championship also face some broader challenges, including geopolitical tensions and questions about the form of one of the competitors.

The most immediate challenge is Ding. The reigning champ is a move-calculating machine. But as he prepares for the biggest test of his career, Ding has at times looked badly out of sorts.

Ding claimed the championship in 2023 after a dramatic match against Nepomniachtchi. The series was tied 7-7 after three weeks, with Ding recovering from a terrible start to clinch a comeback victory. It was a proud moment for China and affirmed its status as a chess superpower. But since then, the 32-year-old’s form has gone from bad to worse.

After taking a nine-month break, Ding returned to competition with disappointing results. His performance at Norway Chess in June was particularly alarming after he lost four games in a row — an unprecedented showing for a world champion. Ding has looked anxious at times, and his results have seen him slump to world No. 23 in the latest FIDE rankings.

Ding admitted to mental health challenges, revealing how self-doubt and anxiety have affected his game.

Facing Ding in this year’s championship is Gukesh, a prodigy aiming to become the youngest world champion in history. Gukesh represents a new wave of Indian talent inspired by Viswanathan Anand, India’s first world champion, who won the title in 2007 to break Russia’s stranglehold over the sport.

In stark contrast to Ding’s struggles, Gukesh has been in serene form. In September, he led India to its first-ever team gold at the Chess Olympiad in Budapest, scoring an impressive 9/10. Currently ranked 18 places above Ding, Gukesh has overtaken his rival as the favorite.

Adding to the intrigue is the championship’s political backdrop. Chess likes to present itself as a major world sport, but it remains one of the few still dominated by Russian leadership. FIDE, the international chess federation, is headed by Arkady Dvorkovich, a former Russian deputy prime minister.

Despite global sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, FIDE has retained strong ties to Moscow, fueling criticism that the game is a tool of Russian soft power.

Russia’s influence on chess is long-standing. For decades, Soviet and Russian players dominated the world championship, with only a few exceptions like Bobby Fischer and Anand breaking the mold. This year, however, there are no Russian contenders in the final, a rarity that underscores the shifting landscape of global chess. Nepomniachtchi is the sole Russian in the top 10.

Howell points to “a clear shift” over the past 10 years away from Russia and toward China and India.

“I don’t know how many resources are going into chess in China. It’s very much a mystery. But in India, a huge amount of government support and sponsorship is funding chess. It’s not a coincidence that there’s a golden generation emerging right now. So in terms of dominance, India seems to be the new Russia.

“This is the battle of Asia,” Howell added. “It is the two superpowers, India and China, battling it out. They’re not going to be the first Asian world champions, but it’s still huge for growing the game in India, which is probably the biggest chess economy right now.”

The 14-game match will run until Dec. 12 (or 13 if tiebreaks are needed). The FIDE World Chess Championship is presented by Google, with online coverage and commentary provided by FIDE and Chess.com.

Leon Watson

Leon Watson is a veteran chess journalist based in London, England.