STAVANGER, Norway (AP) — Few chess players enjoy Magnus Carlsen's celebrity status.
A grand master at 13, refusing to play an American dogged by allegations of cheating, and venturing into the world of online chess gaming all made Norway's Carlsen a household name.
Few chess players have produced the magical commodity that separates Norway’s Magnus Carlsen from any of his peers: celebrity.
Only legends like Russia’s Garry Kasparov and American Bobby Fischer can match his name recognition and Carlsen is arguably an even more dominant player. Last month, he beat both men to be named the International Chess Federation’s greatest ever.
But his motivation to rack up professional titles is on the wane. Carlsen, 33, now wants to leverage his fame to help turn the game he loves into a spectator sport.
“I am in a different stage in my career,” he told The Associated Press. “I am not as ambitious when it comes to professional chess. I still want to play, but I don’t necessarily have that hunger. I play for the love of the game.”
Offering a new way to interact with the game, Carlsen on Friday launched his application, Take Take Take, which will follow live games and players, explaining matches in an accessible way that, Carlsen says, is sometimes missing from streaming platforms like YouTube and Twitch. “It will be a chiller vibe,” he says.
Carlsen intends to use his experience to provide recaps and analysis on his new app, starting with November’s World Chess Championship tournament between China’s Ding Liren and India’s Gukesh Dommaraju. He won't be competing himself because he voluntarily ceded the title in 2023.
Carlsen is no novice when it comes to chess apps. The Play Magnus game, which he started in 2014, gave online users the chance to play against a chess engine modeled against his own gameplay. The company ballooned into a suite of applications and was bought for around $80 million in 2022 by Chess.com, the world’s largest chess website.
Carlsen and Mats Andre Kristiansen, the chief executive of his company, Fantasy Chess, are betting that a chess game where users can follow individual players and pieces, filters for explaining different elements of each game, and light touch analysis will scoop up causal viewers put off by chess’s sometimes rarefied air. The free app was launched in a bid to build the user base ahead of trying to monetizing it. “That will come later, maybe with advertisements or deeper analysis,” says Kristiansen.
While Take Take Take offers a different prospect with its streaming services, it is still being launched into a crowded market with Chess.com, which has more than 100 million users, YouTube, Twitch, and the website of FIDE the International Chess Federation. World Chess was worth around $54 million when it got listed on the London Stock Exchange.
The accessibility of chess engines that can beat any human means cheating has never been easier. However, they can still be used to shortcut thousands of hours of book-bound research, and hone skills that would be impossible against human opponents.
“I think the games today are of higher quality because preparation is becoming deeper and deeper and artificial intelligence is helping us play. It is reshaping the way we evaluate the games,” especially for the new generation of players, says Carlsen.
At the same time, he admits that two decades after becoming a grand master, his mind doesn’t quite compute at the tornado speed it once did. “Most people have less energy when they get older. The brain gets slower. I have already felt that for a few years. The younger players’ processing power is just faster.”
Even so, he intends to be the world’s best for many years to come.
“My mind is a bit slower, and I maybe don’t have as much energy. But chess is about the coming together of energy, computing power and experience. I am still closer to my peak than decline,” he said.
Chess has been cresting a popularity wave begun by Carlsen himself.
He became the world’s top-ranked player in 2011. In 2013, he won the first of his five World Championships. In 2014, he achieved the highest-ever chess rating of 2882, and he has remained the undisputed world number one for the last 13 years.
Off the table, chess influencers, like the world No. 2, Hikaru Nakamura, are using social media to bring the game to a wider audience. The Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit” burnished chess’ unlikely cerebral sex appeal when it became one of the streamer’s biggest hits in 2020.
And in 2022 Carlsen’s refusal to play against Hans Niemann, an American grand master, who admitted to using technology to cheat in online games in the past, created a rare edge in the usually sedate world of chess. There is no evidence Niemann ever cheated in live games but the feud between the pair propelled the game even further into public consciousness.
Whether chess can continue to grow without the full professional participation of its biggest celebrity remains to be seen.
FILE - Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, left, of SG Alpine Warriors plays against Poland's Jan-Krzysztof Duda of Chingari Gulf Titans during Global Chess League in Dubai United Arab Emirates, on July 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili, File)
FILE - Norway's Magnus Carlsen plays Fabiano Caruana of the U.S., during the Norway Chess Open 2024, in Stavanger, Norway, on June 7, 2024. (Carina Johansen /NTB Scanpix via AP, File)
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — King Charles III told a summit of Commonwealth countries in Samoa on Friday that the past could not be changed as he indirectly acknowledged calls from some of Britain’s former colonies for a reckoning over its role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
The British royal understood “the most painful aspects of our past continue to resonate," he told leaders in Apia. But Charles stopped short of mentioning financial reparations that some leaders at the event have urged and instead exhorted them to find the “right language” and an understanding of history “to guide us towards making the right choices in future where inequality exists."
“None of us can change the past but we can commit with all our hearts to learning its lessons and to finding creative ways to right the inequalities that endure," said Charles, who is attending his first Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, or CHOGM, as Britain's head of state.
His remarks at the summit's official opening ceremony echoed comments a day earlier by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer that the meeting should avoid becoming mired in the past and “very, very long endless discussions about reparations.” The U.K. leader dismissed calls from Caribbean countries for leaders at the biennial event to explicitly discuss redress for Britain’s role in the slave trade and mention the matter in its final joint statement.
But Britain's handling of its involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade is seen by many observers as a litmus test for the Commonwealth's adaptation to a modern-day world, as other European nations and some British institutions have started to own up to their role in the trade.
“I think the time has come for this to be taken seriously,” said Jacqueline McKenzie, a partner at London law firm Leigh Day. “Nobody expects people to pay every single penny for what happened. But I think there needs to be negotiations."
Such a policy would be costly and divisive at home, McKenzie said.
The U.K. has never formally apologized for its role in the trade, in which millions of African citizens were kidnapped and transported to plantations in the Caribbean and Americas over several centuries, enriching many individuals and companies. Studies estimate Britain would owe between hundreds of millions and trillions of dollars in compensation to descendants of slaves.
The Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis on Thursday said he wanted a “frank” discussion with Starmer about the matter and would seek mention of the reparations issue in the leaders' final statement at the event. All three candidates to be the next Commonwealth Secretary-General — from Gambia, Ghana and Lesotho — have endorsed policies of reparatory justice for slavery.
Starmer said Thursday in remarks to reporters that the matter would not be on the summit’s agenda. But Commonwealth Secretary-General Patricia Scotland told The Associated Press in an interview that leaders “will speak about absolutely anything they want to speak about" at an all-day private meeting scheduled for Saturday.
King Charles said in Friday's speech that nothing would right inequality “more decisively than to champion the principle that our Commonwealth is one of genuine opportunity for all.” The monarch urged leaders to "choose within our Commonwealth family the language of community and respect, and reject the language of division.”
He has expressed “sorrow” over slavery at a CHOGM summit before, in 2022, and last year endorsed a probe into the monarchy’s ties to the industry.
Charles — who is battling cancer — and his wife, Queen Camilla, will return to Britain tomorrow after visiting Samoa and Australia — where his presence prompted a lawmaker's protest over his country's colonial legacy.
He acknowledged Friday that the Commonwealth had mattered “a great deal” his late mother Queen Elizabeth II, who was seen as a unifying figure among the body's at times disparate and divergent states.
The row over reparations threatened to overshadow a summit that Pacific leaders — and the Commonwealth secretariat — hoped would focus squarely on the ruinous effects of climate change.
“We are well past believing it is a problem for the future since it is already undermining the development we have long fought for,” the king said Friday. “This year alone we have seen terrifying storms in the Caribbean, devastating flooding in East Africa and catastrophic wildfires in Canada. Lives, livelihood and human rights are at-risk across the Commonwealth.”
Charles offered “every encouragement for action with unequivocal determination to arrest rising temperatures” by cutting emissions, building resilience, and conserving and restoring nature on land and at sea, he said.
Samoa is the first Pacific Island nation to host the event, and Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mata'afa said in a speech Friday that it was “a great opportunity for all to experience our lived reality, especially with climate change," which was “the greatest threat to the survival and security of our Pacific people."
Two dozen small island nations are among CHOGM's 56 member states, among them the world’s most imperiled by rising seas. Her remarks came as the United Nations released a stark new report warning that the world was on pace for significantly more warming than expected without immediate climate action.
The population of the member nations of the 75-year-old Commonwealth organization totals 2.7 billion people.
Britain's King Charles III, right, shakes hands with Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer at a reception the King is hosting for for heads of government and spouses/partners attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Apia, Samoa, on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (Samoa CHOGM 2024/Pool Photo via AP)
CHOGM Secretary General Patricia Scotland, right, talks to Britain's King Charles III, center, during the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Apia, Samoa, on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/William West, Pool)
Britain's King Charles III, center, watches as dancers perform during the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Apia, Samoa, on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/William West, Pool)
Britain's King Charles and CHOGM Secretary General Patricia Scotland talk during the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Apia, Samoa, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft/Pool)
Britain's King Charles, centre, stands with delegates during the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Apia, Samoa, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft/Pool)
Britain's King Charles stands with the delegates for a family photo during the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Apia, Samoa, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft/Pool)
Prime Minister of the Bahamas Philip Davis arrives for the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Apia, Samoa, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, Pool)
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, left, and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese react during the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Apia, Samoa, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft/Pool)
Britain's King Charles addresses the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Apia, Samoa, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft/Pool)
Britain's King Charles and CHOGM Secretary General Patricia Scotland talk during the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Apia, Samoa, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft/Pool)
Dancers perform during the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Apia, Samoa, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft/Pool)
Britain's King Charles watches as dancers perform during the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Apia, Samoa, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft/Pool)
Britain's King Charles and Samoan Prime Minister Afioga Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa, left, watch dancers perform during the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Apia, Samoa, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft/Pool)
Britain's King Charles watches dancers perform during the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Apia, Samoa, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft/Pool)
Britain's King Charles and Samoan Prime Minister Afioga Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa, left, talk during the opening ceremony for the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Apia, Samoa, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft/Pool)
