Death By A Thousand Narratives
Death By A Thousand Narratives
Game 8 of the World Chess Championships will be milked for all the narratives... but sometimes the margins in elite sport are just that fine...
Between 900 until 1905, a form of torture or execution called lingchi was practiced in China, Vietnam and Korea. Over an extended period of time, a knife was used to methodically remove portions of the body, eventually resulting in death. You may have heard of lingchi by its more common English nomenclature: death by a thousand cuts.
For those watching Ian Nepomniachtchi’s performance in Game 8 of the World Chess Championship, it shouldn’t be too hard to imagine the pain enacted by this particular form of torture. The cuts were many. Not enough to finish him off. But cumulatively, they did their work.
There had been much discussion about the particular opening that Magnus Carlsen would use in his next outing with the white pieces after the by-now-famous Game 6. It seemed plausible that we would see d4: this being the opening that he had had the most joy with against his challenger so far in the match. When he went for e4 instead, then—to which Nepomniachtchi has been responding with a Petroff—it looked like the Norwegian would happily take a fairly painless draw going into the rest day.
These suspicions were confirmed on move ten when Carlsen slid his queen onto the e1 square, checking Nepomniachtchi’s king and essentially offering a draw. After the game, he suggested that his brain was fried and he wanted a quick end to the game. If the Russian had blocked the check with his queen, they would have taken both of the queens off the board and begun the slow process of liquidation.
But Nepomniachtchi wasn’t up for that. Hiding his king behind the pawn wall on the kingside, he accepted the challenge. This wasn’t going to be easy for Carlsen, it seemed. Or so it appeared until move 21 when Nepomniachtchi pushed his b-pawn to the fifth rank. On Lichess, the move is accompanied by a big orange “?” In chess annotation terms, a single question mark after a move indicates that the annotator thinks that the move is a poor one and that it should not have been played. Mistakes often lead to loss of tempo or material.
And so it proved. Carlsen was able to check the black king with his queen, snaffle up the hanging a-pawn and force Nepomniachtchi into a series of defensive moves. From here the cuts began coming thick and fast. The minor pieces were swapped off. The rooks were swapped off. Carlsen was a pawn up and Nepomniachtchi’s pawn structure was decimated.
Stockfish 14 had Carlsen at around a three-pawn advantage and he soon made it tell. No doubt Nepomniachtchi wanted the game to just be over to end the pain. And by move 46 it was. The last of his lifeblood had ebbed away. He resigned.
If Nepomniachtchi thought the torture was over, he was wrong. There was the small matter of the press conference to sit through. The Russian, gracious in defeat, was perhaps too gracious in defeat and he was soon facing another death: this time by a thousand narratives.
It’s easy looking back with hindsight bias to proclaim all sorts of things. When it comes to the World Chess Championship, the pre-match takes had been carefully manicured to allow for this sort of eventuality. Magnus is favourite! we confidently opined. But you shouldn’t write off Nepo just yet… But as soon as the opportunity arose, write him off we did. This is just what happens playing Magnus, we said. That’s how it goes. You have to play perfectly and then, as soon as you don’t, you get punished.
Of course, these things are true. There is a reason why the models and the bookies had Carlsen as an overwhelming favourite. There exist a good many possible timelines in which the Norwegian wins the World Chess Championship in 2021. At this point, it looks like we’re on one of those timelines. But there were other timelines, not so distant from this one, where things turn out a little different.
Game 8 was causally linked to Game 6. Without the masterful sixth game of the match, we don’t get the eighth. But there were points in the sixth game where the eighth looked a dim and distant prospect. The time scramble around move 40 with both players low on the clock could have seen Nepomniachtchi with the advantage when the dust settled. A draw there or even a win for black and we are spinning our merry narratives using different threads.
Counterfactual history is a tricky business, of course. Who knows how the other timeline unfolds? There is no saying it would have suited Nepomniachtchi any better. Perhaps Carlsen, in the inverse situation, handles his Game 8 better? There is a reason why Carlsen has won so many World Championships, after all. But the death by a thousand narratives that Nepomniachtchi is suffering through is unfair. Sometime the margin between success and failure at this level is just that fine.