Magnus Carlsen relinquished his World Chess Championship title in 2022, but despite that, he still maintains the No. 1 rank in FIDE classical rankings. The five-time World Chess Champion is still the best classical chess player in the world. He is also reigning (shared with Ian Nepomniachtchi) eight-time World Blitz Champion, and a five-time World Rapid Champion.
Carlsen is not part of the ongoing FIDE cycle. He won't participate in the upcoming 2026 Candidates Tournament, and also won't challenge D Gukesh for the World Championship title, or feature at the upcoming 2025 Chess World Cup.
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He wasn't in action at the recent FIDE Grand Swiss in Samarkand, where Anish Giri won and Matthias Blubaum finished as runners-up. The pair also qualified for the Candidates' Tournament.
Speaking to FIDE, Giri discussed the competitive nature of top-level chess tournaments, pointing out that almost all players are on equal playing terms. "I think currently the playing field is very level," he said.
"I gave this interview where people mistook the interview. I said that some players will drop out and I brought up some names and some of those players actually dropped out of top ten. I just brought up like a bunch of names. It was not about particular players but just in general. I was talking about a notion that somehow all the top players now, I don't see anybody standing out with all due respect", the Dutch GM continued.
{{/usCountry}}"I gave this interview where people mistook the interview. I said that some players will drop out and I brought up some names and some of those players actually dropped out of top ten. I just brought up like a bunch of names. It was not about particular players but just in general. I was talking about a notion that somehow all the top players now, I don't see anybody standing out with all due respect", the Dutch GM continued.
{{/usCountry}}Justifying his explanation, he used Gukesh and R Praggnanandhaa as examples. "Okay, Gukesh had this insane run, right? Olympiad and Candidates but now he's having a rough tournament. Pragg (Praggnanandhaa) had an epic run, had a rough tournament here. Those who didn't have an amazing run, had a good run here", he said.
Magnus Carlsen challenged
Giri had a challenge for Carlsen, wanting to see if he would be able to maintain his domination in classical chess. "I would also really love to see if Carlsen would continue playing classical chess. If he would be able to maintain his domination. I guess he would be, but I would expect that it would take a different form and he would become a different player than he is right now. But I don't know that really. But in any case, people that are playing now at the upcoming Candidates and also Gukesh as well as World Champion, I think these are all tremendous players but you can see on a given day anybody can win," he added.