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After 20 years at the top of chess, Magnus Carlsen is making his next move

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STAVANGER, Norway (AP) — Few chess players enjoy Magnus Carlsen‘s celebrity status.

A grand master at 13, refusing to play an American dogged by allegations of cheating, and venturing into the world of online chess gaming all made Norway’s Carlsen a household name.

Few chess players have produced the magical commodity that separates Norway’s Magnus Carlsen from any of his peers: celebrity.

Only legends like Russia’s Garry Kasparov and American Bobby Fischer can match his name recognition and Carlsen is arguably an even more dominant player. Last month, he beat both men to be named the International Chess Federation’s greatest ever.

But his motivation to rack up professional titles is on the wane. Carlsen, 33, now wants to leverage his fame to help turn the game he loves into a spectator sport.

“I am in a different stage in my career,” he told The Associated Press. “I am not as ambitious when it comes to professional chess. I still want to play, but I don’t necessarily have that hunger. I play for the love of the game.”

Offering a new way to interact with the game, Carlsen on Friday launched his application, Take Take Take, which will follow live games and players, explaining matches in an accessible way that, Carlsen says, is sometimes missing from streaming platforms like YouTube and Twitch. “It will be a chiller vibe,” he says.

Carlsen intends to use his experience to provide recaps and analysis on his new app, starting with November’s World Chess Championship tournament between China’s Ding Liren and India’s Gukesh Dommaraju. He won’t be competing himself because he voluntarily ceded the title in 2023.

Carlsen is no novice when it comes to chess apps. The Play Magnus game, which he started in 2014, gave online users the chance to play against a chess engine modeled against his own gameplay. The company ballooned into a suite of applications and was bought for around $80 million in 2022 by Chess.com, the world’s largest chess website.

Carlsen and Mats Andre Kristiansen, the chief executive of his company, Fantasy Chess, are betting that a chess game where users can follow individual players and pieces, filters for explaining different elements of each game, and light touch analysis will scoop up causal viewers put off by chess’s sometimes rarefied air. The free app was launched in a bid to build the user base ahead of trying to monetizing it. “That will come later, maybe with advertisements or deeper analysis,” says Kristiansen.

While Take Take Take offers a different prospect with its streaming services, it is still being launched into a crowded market with Chess.com, which has more than 100 million users, YouTube, Twitch, and the website of FIDE the International Chess Federation. World Chess was worth around $54 million when it got listed on the London Stock Exchange.

The accessibility of chess engines that can beat any human means cheating has never been easier. However, they can still be used to shortcut thousands of hours of book-bound research, and hone skills that would be impossible against human opponents.

“I think the games today are of higher quality because preparation is becoming deeper and deeper and artificial intelligence is helping us play. It is reshaping the way we evaluate the games,” especially for the new generation of players, says Carlsen.

At the same time, he admits that two decades after becoming a grand master, his mind doesn’t quite compute at the tornado speed it once did. “Most people have less energy when they get older. The brain gets slower. I have already felt that for a few years. The younger players’ processing power is just faster.”

Even so, he intends to be the world’s best for many years to come.

“My mind is a bit slower, and I maybe don’t have as much energy. But chess is about the coming together of energy, computing power and experience. I am still closer to my peak than decline,” he said.

Chess has been cresting a popularity wave begun by Carlsen himself.

He became the world’s top-ranked player in 2011. In 2013, he won the first of his five World Championships. In 2014, he achieved the highest-ever chess rating of 2882, and he has remained the undisputed world number one for the last 13 years.

Off the table, chess influencers, like the world No. 2, Hikaru Nakamura, are using social media to bring the game to a wider audience. The Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit” burnished chess’ unlikely cerebral sex appeal when it became one of the streamer’s biggest hits in 2020.

And in 2022 Carlsen’s refusal to play against Hans Niemann, an American grand master, who admitted to using technology to cheat in online games in the past, created a rare edge in the usually sedate world of chess. There is no evidence Niemann ever cheated in live games but the feud between the pair propelled the game even further into public consciousness.

Whether chess can continue to grow without the full professional participation of its biggest celebrity remains to be seen.

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Decathlon world champ LePage dealing with low of missing Olympics while rehabbing

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It’s still difficult to put into words for reigning world decathlon champion Pierce LePage.

The 28-year-old from Whitby, Ont., had to withdraw from the Paris Olympics due to a herniated disc in his back. LePage suffered the injury in the spring but pushed to still compete. However, on July 17, he announced on social media that he would not be in Paris and needed surgery.

“I feel like there’s regret obviously — like, yes, I want to be there and things like that,” LePage said. “But I feel like there’s a lot of people and a lot of fans, friends, support, family, all the people that feeling I kind of let down, let myself down, let my coach down so I felt pretty guilty about that for a long time and still, you know going through the motions.

“Obviously it’s tough. I’m world champion. I had a lot of hopes and a lot of goals going into the Games,” he added. “It’s hard to put into words what I felt, but yeah, it sucked. But I was happy to push through as far as I could with the injury.”

LePage tweaked his back in the “end of March, early April,” doing an exercise in the gym. About two weeks later, while training for the long jump, he landed awkwardly, causing the herniated disc in his back.

LePage competed in several individual events in 2024, mostly indoors, but not a decathlon. He was also granted a medical exemption to not compete at Canadian national trials in June.

He said he knew it was “over” after a warm-up for his final competition in July before leaving for Paris. His pole broke prepping for the pole vault and hit the mat, but for the next couple of days had “a lot of nerve symptoms and a lot of pain” that stopped him from even jogging.

“Athletes go through injuries. It’s not anything new and I’ve always been someone who’s always been able to compete through injury, regardless of how severe it is,” LePage said. “So I thought that when it happened that that must be another case of small setback. I’ll be able to do it if I have some pain, like that’s fine, I’ll do whatever.

“But just the nature of the injury is that if it’s pushing on your nerves, you can’t get the results you want out of it.”

LePage, who will be one of 11 RBC Olympians who will be part of this year’s RBC Training Ground National Final on Saturday in Halifax, had surgery in August and says his progression in rehab has been good, although he doesn’t have a recovery timeline. However, he plans to be back well before the 2025 world championships in Tokyo next September.

LePage was coming off a massive 2023 season, claiming the first international title of his career in Gotzis, Austria, then winning his first world title in Budapest, Hungary, some months later. His mark of 8,909 points in Budapest was a personal best, world lead and sixth-best all-time score.

He also became the first Canadian to win a world title in the event. LePage earned his first worlds medal in 2022, with silver, behind world-record holder Kevin Mayer of France.

He finished 2023 as the top-ranked decathlete in the world, still holding that position until the Paris Olympics.

The 2023 season showed how tough LePage would be to beat, especially when healthy. He finished fifth at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 dealing with a torn patella in his right knee. At the 2022 worlds, he competed through a torn patella in his left knee.

Many expected Canada to decathlon win gold and silver in Paris. Damian Warner of London, Ont., was the reigning Olympic champion heading into Paris and earned silver behind LePage at the 2023 worlds.

However, Warner withdrew with just a couple of events left in the decathlon in Paris after failing to clear the opening height of 4.60 metres in the pole vault on all three of his attempts. Warner fell from second to 18th, with no chance of climbing back into the mix.

LePage pointed to reasons for both men to be driven for redemption in Tokyo next year.

“I’m the world champion. I want to defend my title next year,” he said. “I’m sure Damian feels similar thoughts on not wanting to stop right there.

“No one likes to not finish decathlon. That is definitely drive to doing it again and kind of redeem ourselves, I suppose.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 29, 2024.

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Pro Women’s Hockey League announces plans to expand by 2 teams for 2025-26 season

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The six-team Professional Women’s Hockey League is launching its expansion process with plans to add two franchises for the start of the 2025-26 season, a league executive announced Tuesday.

Speaking at the ESPNW Summit in New York, senior vice president of business operations Amy Scheer said the league will begin sending requests for proposals to several markets starting as early as next week, while also accepting applications.

”(We’re) looking for the right market size, right fan base, right facilities, right economic opportunity — so a lot of research to be done over the next couple months,” Scheer said, without specifying which markets the league might be targeting. “But yeah, looking to continue to build the league and grow the number of teams.”

Among the U.S. expansion candidates are Detroit and Pittsburgh, where the PWHL hosted neutral site games during its inaugural season last year. Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia would also be regarded as candidates after both were considered before the league established teams in Boston, New York and Minnesota. Denver and Seattle are also considered potential candidates.

In Canada, where the league has teams in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, Quebec City has already announced its intention of being a candidate for an expansion franchise. Calgary would be a potential option with the city previously being home to the Inferno from 2011 to 2019, before the Canadian Women’s Hocky League folded.

Scheer also announced the league plans to hold neutral site games in nine markets across North America, and is considering holding an outdoor game. Scheer added the league is also working on holding games in Europe, without specifying when that might happen.

The PWHL’s second season opens on Nov. 30, and features an expanded schedule with each team playing 30 games — up from 24 last year. The league has yet to announce where it’s neutral site games will be played.

Quebec City councilor Jackie Smith announced earlier on Tuesday that the PWHL has agreed to play a neutral site game at the city’s Videotron Centre on Jan. 19. The PWHL’s schedule has Ottawa playing Montreal on that day, with the site yet to be determined.

Smith called the development the first step in Quebec City landing an expansion team.

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AP Women’s Hockey:

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Gushue tops Shuster 7-5 to remain unbeaten at Pan Continental curling championships

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LACOMBE, Alta. – Canada’s Brad Gushue defeated American John Shuster 7-5 on Tuesday to remain unbeaten at the Pan Continental curling championships.

Gushue, from St. John’s, N.L., took the lead with a single in the ninth end and stole a point in the 10th to improve to 4-0.

Shuster fell into a third-place tie with Japan’s Shinya Abe at 3-1. Abe dropped a 5-4 decision to China’s Xiaoming Xu (4-0).

Gushue, vice Mark Nichols, second Brendan Bottcher and lead Geoff Walker were scheduled to play Japan in the evening draw at the Gary Moe Auto Group Sportsplex.

In other early games, New Zealand’s Anton Hood thumped South Korea’s Jaebeom Lee 9-1 and Australia’s Hugh Millikin dumped Taiwan’s Ken Hsu 11-2.

The women’s draw was scheduled to resume Tuesday afternoon. The Canadian team, skipped by Ottawa’s Rachel Homan (3-0), was set to play New Zealand’s Chelsea Suddens.

The competition serves as a qualifier for the 2025 world championships.

Canada has an automatic berth in the men’s worlds as the host country. Homan needs a top-four finish to secure a berth for Canada in the women’s playdowns.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 29, 2024.

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