What Does Two ‘Champions’ Even Mean?

For once, everyone in the chess world appeared to agree with the controversial American chess grandmaster Hans Niemann. “The Chess world is officially a joke,” opined chess’s 21-year-old chief trash-talker as the final hours of 2024 melted away into oblivion. “THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE WORLD CHAMPION!” 

A drama-filled week at the World Blitz Chess Championship had officially boiled over just before the strike of midnight in New York City. The Norwegian chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen, who had made uncomfortable headlines earlier in the week when FIDE, the international governing body of competitive chess, fined the Norwegian ace for wearing jeans to its competition, was at the center of the fracas once again. But this time, Carlsen, who has often curried favor with competitors during his decades-long domination of the sport, found few friends. 

Having bested Niemann in the knockout rounds of the Blitz tournament, Carlsen was in a familiar spot—battling Russian grandmaster Ian Nepomniachtchi for the title of world champion, this time for the speed chess crown. 

In the world of competitive chess, the world champion is he who wins the classical competition, a series of matches that can stretch over days, or, in the fashion of the late American chess great Bobby Fischer, weeks. Blitz is another animal altogether. Matches are played at a blistering pace and the clock is always the player’s worst enemy, as evidenced by the sad howls emitted from the Ukrainian chess grandmaster Vassily Ivanchuk when his clock ran to zero in Round 11 at this year’s competition. 

What makes Carlsen arguably the greatest chess player of all time is his ruthless ability to dominate any time constraint, and in New York on New Year’s Eve, things were no different. Losing and down to his last game against Niemann in the quarterfinals, Carlsen brought his best. Up against the wall and with his clock dwindling, Carlsen was magnificent, turning back the young San Franciscan with a series of swashbuckling moves that rivaled any human player in the history of the game. When it was over, Carlsen had won again. The 34-year-old from Tønsberg mugged for the cameras and slammed his king on the table. 

Niemann, whose passionate denials of accusations that he cheated during a stunning upset victory of Carlsen at the Sinquefield Cup in 2022 set the chess world aflame, was simply no match for the Norwegian’s machinelike brilliance.  

Carlsen breezed through the semifinals, defeating Polish grandmaster Jan-Krzysztof Duda in three straight matches, to set up a star-studded final against one of the only men who has challenged Carlsen when the lights shine brightest—Nepomniachtchi or “Nepo” as he is commonly referred to in the world of chess. 

The title match looked to be over as quickly as it began with Carlsen easily capturing the first two matches in a race to three. But Nepo stormed back, capturing the first game with the white pieces and then successfully finding a way to defeat Carlsen while playing from the weaker black position. The back and forth set up a winner-takes-all situation wherein the next man to win a match would be crowned the 2024 World Blitz champion.

And that’s when things got weird. Carlsen and Nepo tied each of the next three matches before a brief pause confused those watching the world over. Magnus paused his clock and the two chess titans began to chat. Carlsen had an idea—end the title match right then and there with a first-of-its-kind draw. Two “champions.”

Before users on social media had the time to fly into a frenzy, the two men were signing off on their co-championship. 

“I thought at that point, we’d already played for a very long time,” Carlsen said after the tie. “I was very happy to end it and I thought at that point it would’ve been very cruel if one gets first and the other gets second and so I thought it would be a reasonable solution.”

As FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich scrambled to make a ruling, Carlsen turned to Nepo and suggested the two “just play short draws until they give up” if the governing body refused to budge. Chess, the cruelest game of all, would for once end in sweet salutations. 

But not all were happy. In fact, much of the chess world spent the next day complaining about the result with some going as far as to suggest Carlsen had participated in match-fixing. 

“Speechless,” wrote the grandmaster Cristian Chirila. The grandmaster Jacob Aagaard, still frustrated by FIDE’s decision to allow Carlsen to play in jeans also weighed in. “We have already decided that Carlsen can rewrite the rules as he pleases.” 

The grandmaster Elli Paehtz similarly criticized Carlsen: “So Carlsen decides on the format, the dress code and the title regulations?” The chess podcast host Daniel Lona questioned why everyone who played in the tournament shouldn’t be crowned champion. “We’re all world champions!!” he wrote next to an upside down smile emoji.

Even the former Soviet world champion Garry Kasparov, who held the crown for 15 straight years between 1985 and 2000, couldn’t help but share his opinion when asked what Soviet champion Anatoly Karpov would think if Kasparov had suggested a brokered tie during their 1984 championship tilt. 

“He’d insist on a rematch,” Kasparov wrote on 𝕏. 

For Carlsen, who had earlier threatened to leave the tournament after he was fined for wearing jeans, the result was a “reasonable” one. In a sport dominated by decorum and tradition, Carlsen and Nepo smashed the rulebooks for a result that will be hotly debated in the years to come. 

As the internet descended into chaos, Carlsen already had his eyes on a much greater prize. 

The indefatigable Norwegian is set to marry his girlfriend, 26-year-old Ella Victoria Malone, this weekend. The two have been inseparable since they were first publicly seen at a chess tournament in Germany last February and Malone was on hand in New York City to witness history this week. In the abridged words of his rival Niemann: “The Chess Can Wait.” For Carlsen. For the rest of the chess world, and for those who enjoy sports of all stripes, the strange and chaotic ending to the 2024 World Blitz championship prompted wider questions about the nature of competition. 

Why do we play if not to win? Americans especially struggle with the concept of a tie. While cricket and soccer are prone to even scores at the end of a match, only 28 NFL regular season games have ended in a tie since a rule change in 1974 added the overtime feature. Once the playoffs begin, there are no more ties. Ever. The games always end with a winner. And speaking of always ending a game with a winner, the NBA has never toyed with ties in its 79-year history. 

College football fans witnessed their first tie since 1995 this season when HBCU schools Florida Memorial and Clark Atlanta were forced off the field numerous times due to lightning strikes before the game was inevitably called off, a fate decided by Mother Nature. The disappointed FMU Coach Bobby Rome chalked it up to an “act of God.”

The NHL, which features seven Canadian teams, abandoned ties in 2005 preferring to end its game with an exciting sudden death format of 3-on-3 hockey that opens the ice and promotes end-to-end action that more often than not results in a decisive winner. If the teams don’t score within a five minute period, they go to a shootout. No ties. 

But not everyone was so disappointed with the 2024 World Blitz Championship tie. The Russian President Vladimir Putin, a man who is hell-bent for leather to capture real cities in the very real country of Ukraine, extended his congratulations to Nepo following the stalemate. It was all a bit odd considering Nepo publicly challenged Putin only days after the invasion of Ukraine began, condemning the war along with 44 other Russian chess personalities.

Such is the bizarre nature of our topsy-turvy world. In the words of ’60s Bronx rockers The Blue Magoos, “One day you’re up and the next day you’re down.” But on that day in New York City, Carlsen and Nepo found a different way forward. They charted territory only they could see. Together, at the top.