Magnus Carlsen relinquishes his world title. Replacing him won’t be easy.

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 Magnus Carlsen relinquishes his world title.  Replacing him won't be easy.

The decision announced on Wednesday by Magnus Carlsen, the reigning world chess champion, to miss a chance to defend the crown in a match next year means there will soon be a new defending champion.

And in chess, that could be the hard part. Whoever wins next year’s World Cup match, now played between Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia, who won the Candidates Tournament earlier this month to become the mandatory contender, and Ding Liren of China, who finished runner-up, above is seen as illegitimate, or at least severely weakened champion.

Arkady Dvorkovich, the president of the International Chess Federation, the governing body of the game, confirmed this on Wednesday after Carlsen announced his decision to relinquish the championship he has won five times.

“His decision not to defend the title is undoubtedly a disappointment for the fans and bad news for the spectacle,” said Dvorkovich in a statement from the federation, which organized the World Cup match. “It leaves a big void”

While Carlsen’s decision isn’t unprecedented, history suggests the new champion will have great difficulty filling in his footsteps.

In 1975, Bobby Fischer, the spirited American who snatched the championship from Russia’s Boris Spassky in a 1972 game that caught the world’s attention for being played against the backdrop of the Cold War, refused to turn down the title defense. At the time, Fischer was in lengthy negotiations with the federation, but when they couldn’t come to an agreement, he decided he would rather quit than play – despite pleas from many people, including politicians, and the offer of millions of dollars for the prize fund.

Fischer’s abdication saw Anatoly Karpov, who had qualified as a challenger, become the new de facto champion. And initially there was a feeling that Karpov did not deserve this title. But over the next decade he showed he was a worthy successor by dominating the competition. He held the No. 1 ranking for almost a decade and proved himself time and time again by winning nine straight tournaments against the world’s best players.

A better comparison to the reality Carlsen’s successor might face is the events between 1993 and 2006 when the World Championship was split between competing contenders.

The problem arose when Garry Kasparov, who had defeated Karpov to become champion in 1985 and then successfully defended his title against Karpov three times, was due to play against Nigel Short of England, who had won the Candidates games. Kasparov and Short were unhappy with the way the World Chess Federation organized the match and that he would receive a 20 percent share of the prize money, so they formed their own organization and negotiated their own deal. The federation retaliated by declaring his match illegitimate, stripping Kasparov of the title and organizing a league match of their own between Karpov and Jan Timman of the Netherlands, whom Short had beaten in the Candidates final.

After Kasparov and Karpov won their respective games, both claimed to be world champions. Although Karpov had the support of the Federation, most people considered Kasparov the rightful king and called him the classic or lineal champion.

The federation’s defending champions lost even more public scrutiny after organizing a series of tournaments to crown a champion, and the winners were mostly players with less outstanding pedigrees than Karpov or Kasparov.

Kasparov also continued playing and continued as No. 1 until his retirement in 2005, although in 2000 he lost a title match to Vladimir Kramnik of Russia, who was then widely recognized as the world champion.

The split in the chess world was only overcome in 2006 when then-federation champion Veselin Topalov, a Bulgarian grandmaster, played and lost a reunion match against Kramnik.

Competition and legacy issues aside, however, there are other parallels between Kasparov and Carlsen that may overshadow Carlsen’s successor – and have an impact on chess itself.

Kasparov was and is a dynamic personality who did a lot to popularize the game. While Carlsen is nothing like Kasparov, he has a large stake in a publicly traded global chess company named after him (Play Magnus), has been a model for a hip clothing brand (G-Star Raw), and has hosted technology exhibitions and finance conferences . He was even on a Norwegian reality TV show.

In short, Carlsen made chess cool, and while he’s not quitting, it won’t be the same until he’s world champion, which Dvorkovich alluded to in his statement.

Carlsen is also by far the highest-ranked player in the world, a position he won’t lose if he doesn’t defend his title. As long as he keeps playing what he announced in his announcement, he will eclipse everyone else, just like Kasparov once did.

The title of world champion is undoubtedly valuable. It’s possible that whoever wins next year’s title match will gain enough stature to be considered a legitimate and worthy rival and successor to Carlsen. But history suggests otherwise.

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