Opinion of World Champ Magnus Carlsen

[°Leprechaun]

He is currently competing to be world champion against Fabiano Caruana.

After twelve draws, he has now won the last three games. He looks like a winner to me.

[mvd10]

FF, but the way he drew game 12 was just cowardly. Carlsen was in a better position and Caruana was under some time pressure, but Carlsen offered a draw because he bet on the tiebreaks (Carlsen is by far the best rapid player in the world, Caruana isn't even in the top 10 there lol). We already have a world rapid chess championship anyway. But other than that Carlsen remains a huge FF.

I'm not even complaining about the 12 draws btw. I didn't really follow it, but I'm sure some of these games were gems even though they ended in a draw. Draws can be beautiful too .

[GeorgiaModerate]

My opinion: he's a pretty good chess player.

[muon2]

Carlsen's a great chess player at all time controls - classical, rapid, and blitz. They each take different skills, for example Hikaru Nakamura is great at high speeds but is notably weaker at classical chess that has a longer time to calculate moves. Carlsen took a lot of flak from other grandmasters for his game 12 draw but he knew he was much better at the other formats than Caruana. Essentially he wanted to get out of the classical game to a different one.

There are world championships separately for rapid and blitz, but since the current format uses rapid and blitz as tiebreakers, so technically there isn't one currently. Also the fixed length formt the counts draws at 1/2 gives a significant edge to a player that could hop out to an early lead, then draw the remainder of the games to win.

I would like to see a pure classical championship based on Jose Raul Capablanca's "London Rules" proposal from 1922. The first player with six wins would be the champion, and draws wouldn't count. That forces more decisive games but doesn't given an early leader too large of an advantage.

[NewYorkExpress]

He's the best Chess Player of the Modern Era, by far.

I would've liked to see him go up against Bobby Fischer or Paul Morphy, but that isn't possible without a time machine.

On the other hand, seeing him go up against Garry Kasparov would be quite interesting...but I think that's already happened at some point.

[Lord Halifax]

My opinion: he's a pretty good chess player.

And Grand Canyon is a hole in the ground in Arizona.