A new world champion, new controversies, new tournaments and new faces challenging old stalwarts: 2023 was quite a chess year, with many notable and exciting games along the way. Sometimes, it feels like tournaments and entire careers can turn with a single game, and while that may not prove to be the case over the long run, the games listed below sure felt like butterfly effect moments as we watched them live.
Here are the most important chess matches of 2023. Also, a quick note: the World Rapid and Blitz Championship is a bit too much of a buzzer-beater to include here. (If FIDE wanted it to make the cut, they should have held it earlier! And in a less silly location. That way, we wouldn’t see so many big names skipping it. Anyway.)
Ding Liren shuns repetition to win the world chess championship
I mean, of course. Say what you will about Ding Liren’s Cinderella-slash-dodgy story of making it to the Candidates and then the world championship match, he’s certainly proven his mettle in a slugfest against Ian Nepomniachtchi that went all the way to the wire. Trading an even number of blows in the classical games, the match progressed to the rapid tiebreakers, and it seemed like it would dwindle down to the blitz time controls with the fourth game on the verge of a draw by three-fold repetition, but the Chinese grandmaster juked his opponent and played on, surprising commentators and audiences alike – and no doubt, his opponent, too.
Surprised and rattled, Nepo soon erred and fell short in his second successive world championship match as Ding seized the day. His lack of notable tournament showings afterward in the year has been a huge disappointment, but if the new world champion returns in strong form for 2024, we could look back at this game as the beginning of a new chess era.
Carlsen ignites another cheating controversy as he blames a watch for his loss
Despite winning the World Cup, 2023 was not Magnus Carlsen’s year when it came to classical chess, a format he looks poised to more or less leave behind. His well-intentioned but questionably-executed anti-cheating crusade also continued in 2023, albeit in less explosive fashion than the Hans Niemann controversy: round two of the Qatar Masters 2023 tournament saw him lose against Alisher Suleymenov, a Kazakhstani grandmaster rated 2512 at the time, over 300 Elo points below the five-time world chess champion.
Suleymenov put up a super-impressive tactical performance, but it was his attire that drew attention after the game, more specifically, his timepiece. “As soon as I saw my opponent was wearing a watch early in the game, I lost my ability to concentrate,” Carlsen wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, pointing out that a tournament of this high caliber (in terms of prize pool and the level of competitors) forbade any such accessories, even those of the old-school kind.
As far as the rulebook is concerned, Carlsen was right; events of the highest caliber forbid the presence of essentially anything that might be used to transmit electronic signals, even pens.
It was a tournament to forget but a game to remember as the cheating concerns continue to swirl all around the chess world.
Nakamura wins Norway Chess 2023 with the Fried Liver Attack
Channeling the spirit of every amateur chess player ever, Hikaru Nakamura completed a blistering comeback at the 2023 edition of Norway Chess to leapfrog Fabiano Caruana in the final round of play, tricking his compatriot in a devious line where he baited out an erroneous pawn sacrifice on move 17. It was one of the few blemishes on Caruana’s otherwise excellent chess year.
The two Americans will go toe-to-toe again at the 2024 Candidates, and Hikaru has become a bit of a bogeyman for the world number two over the course of this calendar year. Their upcoming encounters are guaranteed to be the chess equivalent of box office gold.
Honorable mentions: Nijat Abasov, Wesley So, the rating race and the mess that followed
Nijat Abasov made history at the World Cup, at least as long as Magnus Carlsen maintains his disinterest in the classical world championship cycle. With his fourth-placed finish at the showpiece event, he’s in prime position to take one of the Candidates qualification spots on offer for the podium finishers, as long as the Norwegian phenom doesn’t change his mind about rejecting the golden ticket. His upset win over Vidit Gujrathi was the Azerbaijani grandmaster’s most impactful and impressive chess match in his career, but he will be a gigantic underdog heading into the world championship qualification event.
In retrospect, we will look back at the rating rollercoaster at the Sinquefield Cup as a hugely impactful set of chess games heading into 2024 due to their impact on the Candidates qualification. (Sound familiar? Yes, everything revolves around these all-important spots at this time in the chess world.) While players proceeded to game the system in hastily organized alternative tournaments late into December, courting controversy and leaving everything up in the air, the back-and-forth between Wesley So, Anish Giri, Alireza Firouzja, and Leinier Dominguez-Perez was thrilling to watch, with the latter’s win over Giri serving as one of the highlights of the tournament.
Finally, we’d be amiss not to mention Wesley So’s incredible sacrificial attack against Magnus Carlsen. Sure, it came as a relatively low-stakes group stage match at the Champions Chess Tour final between the two leaders, but it reminded the world just how different So’s style is in faster time controls. Far from his solid and conservative approach in classical play, he is nothing short of vicious in rapid and blitz games, and this time, even the world number one couldn’t withstand the heat. It was a special gift to witness this one on the live broadcast, and it’s a great rewatch to cap off 2023.
Again, at least until the World Rapid and Blitz begins. Damn you, FIDE!
