Road game

For the No. 1 Chess Player On Earth—A Road Game 
June 3, 2013, 7:19 p.m. ET

Norwegian Magnus Carlsen Heads to India to Play the World Champion—On His Home Turf
By BEN COHEN

Magnus Carlsen is that rare chess grandmaster who is both the No. 1 player in the world and, according to the U.K. edition of Cosmopolitan magazine, one of the 100 sexiest men of 2013. (“Check this hottie out!”) The boyishly handsome Carlsen, with his dimpled grin and surfer’s hair, has done some modeling and wears snazzy blazers to advertise his sponsors during matches. Carlsen is already a celebrity fixture, having defeated Stephen Colbert in rock-paper-scissors and, of course, met Jay-Z.

His global fame is one reason why some believe the World Chess Championship in November between Carlsen and reigning world champion Viswanathan Anand is the most-anticipated chess match since Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky in 1972. Carlsen is already the youngest No. 1 in the history of chess. A win in the world championship would establish him, at the age of 22, as one of the five best players ever.

As it turns out, though, staging the sport’s grandest event in 40 years has been a chess game in itself. That this year’s world championship will be played in Chennai, India—Anand’s hometown—was determined only last month after years of political strategizing, transcontinental negotiations and even gastronomic concerns.

The decision also raised a question long decided by other sports: Is there such a thing as home-court advantage in chess? “There are people who believe in it,” said Peter Doggers, owner of the website ChessVibes, “and also people who believe in the opposite.”

Chess is as much about a player’s comfort as it is his wits. Grandmasters relying on endurance reserves to get them through hours of mental intensity need clear minds to focus—and playing somewhere unfamiliar could be disrupting enough to foil them. “It’s just that little bit of insecurity when you’re playing on your opponent’s home soil,” Carlsen said.

Carlsen recently posted on Facebook a criticism of the World Chess Federation, or FIDE, for its “lack of transparency, predictability and fairness” in granting the event to India without soliciting bids from other countries. Carlsen said he was similarly disappointed that the sport’s international governing body didn’t choose a neutral venue. But even Carlsen, who is from Norway, says it’s “hard to say” if Chennai would be any different from Oslo.

Playing in Chennai is far from a guaranteed victory for Anand. In fact, he won the 2010 world championship in Bulgaria, home of his challenger that year. Anand will appreciate the support of the crowd, he said, but he acknowledged that there will be more attention and pressure for him to win the first world championship India has hosted. Anand says he wasn’t involved with Chennai’s bid and tries to remain removed from all the politics. “In the end, wherever you play, it comes down to making good moves on the chess board,” he said.

Carlsen has never been to India, and he may acclimate by arriving in Chennai a month before the three-week match. FIDE officials say they’re importing two Norwegian chefs to tend to Carlsen’s culinary wishes. Carlsen likes Indian cuisine just as much as traditional Norwegian food, but his team is concerned about foreign bacteria. “We have to be careful,” said Espen Agdestein, his manager, “to make sure he doesn’t risk getting sick.”

The trickiest part of Carlsen’s preparation could be dealing with India’s climate. November is one of Chennai’s mildest months, Anand said, and the weather by then should be “quite pleasant.” But weather and temperature are still factors in high-level chess competitions. “Playing in Moscow in March is very different from Spain in February,” Anand said.

Where the world championship would be held was up for debate long before Carlsen clinched his spot across from Anand. It ended up in Chennai the same way bidding processes decide the host countries for the Olympics—except, in this case, without much bidding.

In 2011, when Russia beat out India for the 2012 world championship, FIDE awarded India a consolation prize: a chance to bid exclusively on the 2013 match. After FIDE extended India’s deadline—chess isn’t easy to market, FIDE officials say, and they feared India would pull its bid if they entertained competing offers—Chennai was unveiled as the host city on April 8. FIDE and India’s chess federations signed a memorandum of understanding on April 19.

Then the backlash began. The first letter that FIDE received on May 3 was a formal complaint from Norway’s chess federation that urged FIDE to open the bidding process for the world championship. “It will be an advantage both for the players and FIDE to have a fair and transparent procedure and competition for the selection of the organizer,” wrote Jøran Aulin-Jansson, the group’s president.

A competing bid arrived that same day, when Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoë wrote to FIDE and publicly backed the French federation’s proposal to host the event, dangling a bigger prize than the purse offered by the Indian budget. Delanoë wrote that the world championship would “contribute to the international influence of Paris.”

FIDE’s board met that week in Baku, Azerbaijan, to contemplate its next move. The more lucrative offer was from a European metropolis closer to Carlsen’s base that could appeal to global sponsors and television executives. But the organization already had agreed on a deal with Anand’s native country, and FIDE officials were interested in using the world championship to market chess throughout India.

The announcement came on May 5: The host city would indeed be Chennai.

Carlsen wrote in his Facebook statement that he was disheartened by the process but would begin preparing immediately to play in India. His and Anand’s managers will meet in Athens this week to approve the match’s terms and conditions.

Then he will start practicing and organizing a training camp, like his trip to the Canary Islands before the London tournament where he won his spot in the world championship in April. “He likes to be in a climate where it’s sunny and he can swim,” Agdestein said. For this match, Carlsen said, he might train in a location similar to Chennai.

Carlsen’s practice regimen consists not only of chess showdowns and computer simulations but also of traditional weight training and cardiovascular exercise. Carlsen incorporates basketball into his workouts, too, as a devout NBA fan who has tweeted from courtside seats. He predicted recently that the Miami Heat would beat the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals—with a very specific footnote. “They’ll win it on home court,” he said. 

Source: http://online.wsj.com