re: Magnus Carlsen to forgo the defense of his title

Probably similar to the NFL back in the 90's.
With streaming and YouTube being a big earning potential these days, it helps their earnings.

The top 1-2 can make $5M+, with a current net worth around $50M for Carlsen or Hikaru.
The next elite tier can make $1-2M/yr.
The really good players may make $300-500k.
The rest don't make much at all. Maybe enough to cover expenses to go to tournaments, but likely not even enough to cover that.

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He just curb stomped everyone in a rapid tournament and had a 3327 event rating.
He made super GMs look like rookies.

The format just accentuates his skill.
Fewer people can just use computer prep and memorization to stay close.

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Yeah he's pretty much GOAT status in my mind. I was also giving this some thought, do you think he waited until after the candidates was done to see if Hikaru would happen to win? It's no secret that Carlsen isn't his biggest fan so I wonder if Hikaru happened to come out the candidates if Magnus would have actually played to make sure Hikaru never got to call himself world champ.

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Bobby Fischer said after he achieved his goal of the world title, he really had no desire to compete...

That chess was boring. Unimaginative.

And that winning at the highest level takes excessive amount of prep as it's just massive amounts of memorization.

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Hikaru says that this is the reason Magnus is punching out.

That guy won his first chess match while he was still in the womb

He said one hell of a run, I can’t blame him for wanting to take a break

Makes sense when you think about it.

He's already a master of discipline. Can get into any streamed cash game of his choosing.

Live mtt's can be a soul sucking grind but probably much less so for a chess player.

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Fischer Random might be more up your alley. It's the same rules and board as chess but the back ranks are shuffled every game so you never know what your starting position is going to be, thus prep is pretty much worthless and allows for instincts and creativity to be the main skill that shines.

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Fischer Random does interest me, but finding a regular face-to-face opponent is obviously not always easy. Honestly, as I've gotten older I've found Go to be more appealing to me than chess. Perhaps it's because I've played a lot of chess and Go is just so different at the most fundamental levels that it is difficult for me to grok. At first glance it seems very simple - all the pieces are the same, and they don't move once you've put them in play - but when you really begin to try and understand the strategy involved in playing well, you find that it is orders of magnitude deeper than chess is. The potential move bank is so vast that memorizing anything more than commonly-seen tactical positions is useless.

To put it in mathematical terms, at the beginning of a game of chess, each player has 20 potential moves they can make on their first turn (each pawn advance either one or two squares, plus two potential squares to move each knight). Thus, after each player has made their first move, there are 400 possible positions that can arise, and of these positions, only a comparative handful are common. In Go, the black player has a choice of 360 moves to make on his first turn, and the white player has a choice of 359 (the entire board minus whatever point black played on his turn). Thus, after each player has made one move, there are 129,240 possible positions. In subsequent moves the number of possible positions quickly scales into ludicrous territory.

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but still odd to give up a year in your prime.

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He's 31. His prime is over. Quick downturn mentally after 30.

I forget the exact range but male mental primes are like 17-25 or something

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how much does a high ranking chess player make?

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Not as much as Carlsen.

Scottie Scheffler is a “high ranking golfer”

Carlsen is Tiger woods