Magnus Carlsen picks his successor and it is not D Gukesh: ‘That’s the honest answer'

Magnus Carlsen’s current Elo rating is 2837, which is more than 30 points clear of second-placed Hikaru Nakamura.

Magnus Carlsen once again confirmed his status as the GOAT, winning Norway Chess for a record seventh time. Carlsen won the tournament with 16 points, and Fabiano Caruana finished in second position with 15.5 points and D Gukesh (14.5) ended in third place. Meanwhile, Hikaru Nakamura came fourth with 14 points and Arjun Erigaisi (13) came fifth. Also, Chinese GM Wei Yi came sixth with 9.5 points.

Magnus Carlsen during a match. (HT_PRINT)

Carlsen’s current Elo rating is 2837, which is more than 30 points clear of second-placed Nakamura.

Speaking after the final round at Norway Chess, Carlsen was asked to pick his successor. He had a brutal reply, stating, “There is no one. There is no one at the moment. That's the honest answer. There could be, but at the moment, it’s not likely.”

Calling the younger generation as kids, he added, “At the moment, I still think that the older guys are better. Every single one of them (kids) has very, very clear flaws in their games.”

Singling out Gukesh, he said, “I think Gukesh showed in this tournament that he is on track, he is doing fantastic, but he's maybe not way ahead of track as we may have thought.”

“I think he is kind of little bit where I was, 2008, 2009ish, where he can do extremely well, but you can still see that there are that great results that come not only with the quality of positional play, it's a lot of fighting qualities. That is what kids are supposed to do, you are not supposed to master everything at that age. As for the others, yes, they are good but the likelihood of one of them becoming like a very clear number one, I don’t see it very clearly at the moment,” he added.

Carlsen also had special praise for 14-year-old Turkish GM Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus, calling him extremely good.