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The Grandmaster: Magnus Carlsen and the Match That Made Chess Great Again
A firsthand account of the dramatic 2016 World Chess Championship between Norway's Magnus Carlsen and Russia's Sergey Karjakin, which mirrored the world's geopolitical unrest and rekindled a global fascination with the sport.
The first week of November 2016, as a crowd of people swarmed outside of Manhattan’s Trump Tower to rail against the election of Donald Trump, hundreds more descended on the city’s South Street Seaport. But they weren’t there to protest. They were there to watch the World Chess Championship between Norway's Magnus Carlsen and Russia's Sergey Karjakin—what by the time it was over would be front-page news and thought by many the greatest finish in chess history.
The story lines were riveting. The championship hadn’t been hosted in New York City, the de facto world capital of the sport, in more than two decades. With both Carlsen and Karjakin just 25 years old, the tournament organizers were billing it as a battle of the millennials—the first time the championship had been waged among the generation that grew up playing chess primarily against computers. And perhaps most intriguing were all the geopolitical connections to the match. Originally from Crimea, Karjakin had recently repatriated to Russia under the direct assistance of Putin. Carlsen, meanwhile, had expressed admiration for Donald Trump, and his first move of the tournament he played with a smirk what's called a Trompowsky Attack. Then there was the Russian leader of the World Chess Federation being barred from attending due to US sanctions, and chess fanatic and Trump adviser Peter Thiel being called on to make the honorary first move in sudden death.
That the tournament required sudden death was a shock. Oddsmakers had given Carlsen, the defending champion, an 80% chance of winning. It would take everything he had to retain his title. In doing so, he would firmly make his case to be considered the greatest player chess has ever seen.
Author Brin-Jonathan Butler was granted unique access to the two-and-half-week tournament and watched every move. In The Grandmaster , he aims to do for Magnus Carlsen what Norman Mailer did for Muhammed Ali in The Fight , John McPhee did for Arthur Ashe in Levels of the Game, and David Foster Wallace did for Roger Federer in his famous New York Times Magazine profile. Butler captures one of the world’s greatest sportsmen at the height of their powers, and attempts to decipher the secret to that greatness.
The first week of November 2016, as a crowd of people swarmed outside of Manhattan’s Trump Tower to rail against the election of Donald Trump, hundreds more descended on the city’s South Street Seaport. But they weren’t there to protest. They were there to watch the World Chess Championship between Norway's Magnus Carlsen and Russia's Sergey Karjakin—what by the time it was over would be front-page news and thought by many the greatest finish in chess history.
The story lines were riveting. The championship hadn’t been hosted in New York City, the de facto world capital of the sport, in more than two decades. With both Carlsen and Karjakin just 25 years old, the tournament organizers were billing it as a battle of the millennials—the first time the championship had been waged among the generation that grew up playing chess primarily against computers. And perhaps most intriguing were all the geopolitical connections to the match. Originally from Crimea, Karjakin had recently repatriated to Russia under the direct assistance of Putin. Carlsen, meanwhile, had expressed admiration for Donald Trump, and his first move of the tournament he played with a smirk what's called a Trompowsky Attack. Then there was the Russian leader of the World Chess Federation being barred from attending due to US sanctions, and chess fanatic and Trump adviser Peter Thiel being called on to make the honorary first move in sudden death.
That the tournament required sudden death was a shock. Oddsmakers had given Carlsen, the defending champion, an 80% chance of winning. It would take everything he had to retain his title. In doing so, he would firmly make his case to be considered the greatest player chess has ever seen.
Author Brin-Jonathan Butler was granted unique access to the two-and-half-week tournament and watched every move. In The Grandmaster , he aims to do for Magnus Carlsen what Norman Mailer did for Muhammed Ali in The Fight , John McPhee did for Arthur Ashe in Levels of the Game, and David Foster Wallace did for Roger Federer in his famous New York Times Magazine profile. Butler captures one of the world’s greatest sportsmen at the height of their powers, and attempts to decipher the secret to that greatness.
224 pages, Hardcover
Published November 13, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 81 reviews
November 13, 2018
The author is completely unaware of recent developments in chess. Most notably its affinity to online play as well as the scholastic boom. In the past, Chess players had trouble making a living but this has changed dramatically because of the aforementioned factors. A brief bit of research on the internet will confirm my point. That is research the author should have completed while writing this book.
Instead, he wrote a book that serves to confirm outdated stereotypes of chess.
Instead, he wrote a book that serves to confirm outdated stereotypes of chess.
December 2, 2019
An account of the much-anticipated 2016 championship match between enigmatic grandmaster Magnus Carlsen and Russia's Sergey Karjakin by a sportswriter more used to covering boxing matches. Against a backdrop of the Trump dark horse seizure of the presidency, the two players play draw after draw until they are mentally and physically spent.
Unfortunately, this is a magazine article artificially inflated into a book-length project. I try not to review books by saying "this book is X, not Y," and instead enjoy them as whatever X they are, but this book is not about the championship. We hear a great deal about the author's family history, from fleeing to Hungary as penniless immigrants to drunken abusive uncles, with miscarriages, alcoholism, and attempted suicide to dress it up. There's a long chapter about artificial intelligence and Deep Blue's match with Kasparov and the rise of computer chess and how cold, bloodless, and uninteresting it is. But we are not reading about computer chess. Is this necessary? Then there's a great deal about Bobby Fisher, ostensibly because Magnus may have the seeds of another prodigy whose single-minded obsession devolves into mad, paranoid isolation. But there's not a trace of evidence for this parallel; indeed, there's very little about Magnus at all other than some bare biographical information. We hear about chess fan Stanley Kubrick, photographer Harry Benson who took celebrated photos of Fisher, and other prodigies. There's information on Paul Morphy, the 19th century prodigy; chess clubs in New York City in the 19th century, through the depression, the '50s, and onward. Peter Winston, chess master who disappeared in mysterious circumstances. Judit Polgar. Women in chess in general. Possibly the crazy prodigies might have some preliminary connection or even hypothetical connection to Magnus, but what does Polgar have to do with it? There's more: How the author came to play chess in Cuba. Chess in Cuba. The movie Searching for Bobby Fischer and the character's real life inspiration. As to the prose style, it's decent. But to add more padding, every time the author inserts himself into an interview, it is to add absolutely nothing of value to the conversation. He will repeat what someone said or re-phrase it in a certain way, and his subject will repeat what he says. About 1/6 of the book describes the events of the match. This book is about chess, but not the chess match. And so I was disappointed.
Unfortunately, this is a magazine article artificially inflated into a book-length project. I try not to review books by saying "this book is X, not Y," and instead enjoy them as whatever X they are, but this book is not about the championship. We hear a great deal about the author's family history, from fleeing to Hungary as penniless immigrants to drunken abusive uncles, with miscarriages, alcoholism, and attempted suicide to dress it up. There's a long chapter about artificial intelligence and Deep Blue's match with Kasparov and the rise of computer chess and how cold, bloodless, and uninteresting it is. But we are not reading about computer chess. Is this necessary? Then there's a great deal about Bobby Fisher, ostensibly because Magnus may have the seeds of another prodigy whose single-minded obsession devolves into mad, paranoid isolation. But there's not a trace of evidence for this parallel; indeed, there's very little about Magnus at all other than some bare biographical information. We hear about chess fan Stanley Kubrick, photographer Harry Benson who took celebrated photos of Fisher, and other prodigies. There's information on Paul Morphy, the 19th century prodigy; chess clubs in New York City in the 19th century, through the depression, the '50s, and onward. Peter Winston, chess master who disappeared in mysterious circumstances. Judit Polgar. Women in chess in general. Possibly the crazy prodigies might have some preliminary connection or even hypothetical connection to Magnus, but what does Polgar have to do with it? There's more: How the author came to play chess in Cuba. Chess in Cuba. The movie Searching for Bobby Fischer and the character's real life inspiration. As to the prose style, it's decent. But to add more padding, every time the author inserts himself into an interview, it is to add absolutely nothing of value to the conversation. He will repeat what someone said or re-phrase it in a certain way, and his subject will repeat what he says. About 1/6 of the book describes the events of the match. This book is about chess, but not the chess match. And so I was disappointed.
December 14, 2018
Bloated prose. The metaphors and similes were way over-the-top in many instances, with the whole “execution” metaphor really overdone. Several decent anecdotal stories, though.
December 2, 2020
This book is excellent.
Such a riveting journey into the madness of the chess world and an attempt to come to terms with the fine line between genius and insanity.
Some truly incredible stories within the story and well worth a read.
Such a riveting journey into the madness of the chess world and an attempt to come to terms with the fine line between genius and insanity.
Some truly incredible stories within the story and well worth a read.
March 21, 2022
2.5 out of 5 stars
As with any nonfiction book, I award points if I learned something, and I certainly learned a few things from this book (mostly unverified anecdotes about chess history, for which no citations or sources were provided). I also gave a point or two for the author’s expert descriptions of the scene of the 2016 World Chess Championship — and of the players (their body language, expressions, and so on). For those parts and others, it was easy to imagine oneself on the scene.
But, wow, was this author all over the place. The first really startling moment was on page 6 when he suddenly interrupts his introduction of the Big Match to wonder “What the hell was I doing there?” So the author takes us on a journey through his *own* history with chess and a drunk Hungarian uncle and rooftop chess games in Cuba, and... A bunch of stuff not related at all to the 2016 tournament. (There are also chapters on Judit Polgar’s background, why Josh Waitzkin quit chess, and how Pete Winston disappeared — again, none of them related in any way to the topic at hand.)
And of course the subtitle is a poor attempt to link the match to the former president’s campaign slogan — the title is just as meaningless as the slogan. Chess hadn’t become somehow ungreat before this, nor did this match change chess in any fundamental way.
October 14, 2021
Very interesting view of events around a world chess championship. there is some very evocative writing, and thoughtful insights into the game and players. However, there is a bit of a boxing mentality about the writing, which detracts from the overall narrative. There is a huge difference between boxing and chess, in that you are not beating the brains violently of the other person. While this may involve psychological battles, it doesn’t involve inflicting brain damage on the other person, despite the author’s cursory and uninformed attempt to link chess with madness. I personally detested the author’s attitudes to boxing, which really spoiled an otherwise very good piece of writing.
November 14, 2018
https://www.themaineedge.com/sports/t...
“Chess is everything: art, science and sport.” – Anatoly Karpov
The game of chess is one with an ancient history. The game has been played for hundreds of years by millions of people from all corners of the globe. It is buoyed by its universality and its basic meritocratic structure – the more skilled player almost always wins.
You would think such a game would have deep appeal to the American psyche. That isn’t the case, however – not since the too-brief domination of the world stage by Bobby Fischer back in the 1970s has the United States paid much attention to the game.
But when the World Chess Championship landed in New York City in 2016, Brin-Jonathan Butler was there for it. His chronicle of that battle between Norwegian wunderkind Magnus Carlsen and Russian Sergey Karjakin - the first WCC contested on American soil in two decades - is titled “The Grandmaster: Magnus Carlsen and the Match That Made Chess Great Again.”
It’s an insider’s look at a match that was considered almost a foregone conclusion at the onset before turning into a battle for the ages featuring one of the greatest finishes in chess history. It is also an examination of the history of the game as well as the state of chess today, both here and abroad.
It was the first week of November in 2016. The recent Presidential election had New York City in tumult. But at the city’s South Street Seaport, a different kind of energy was bubbling. For the first time since 1995, the championship of the chess world was going to be decided in the United States.
On one side was the Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, the reigning world champion. Carlsen was viewed as a potential breakout star, a player who could serve as a face of the game. On the other was Sergey Karjakin, a Russian whose star power didn’t match Carlsen’s, but whose tenacious game and competitive streak earned him a spot at the table.
Both men were elite competitors, but Carlsen was expected to triumph without much difficulty. What happened instead was a hard-fought, grueling match – one that made it all the way to sudden death.
Alongside his tension-soaked recounting of the championship faceoff, Butler spends time investigating the game itself. We learn about its history in the United States in general and in New York City in particular. The role of computers in the game - from the first rudimentary programs to the supercomputer Deep Blue to the unbeatable chess simulators of today - is investigated. Butler speaks to people who orbit in various chess circles – chess club owners and hustlers alike. He explores the relationship that certain famous figures had with the game – the esteem it held in the eyes of notables like Stanley Kubrick and Humphrey Bogart.
And looming over it all is the shadow of Bobby Fischer.
No conversation about chess in America is complete without acknowledging the legacy of the country’s greatest player. Whether discussing Fischer’s meteoric rise, his turmoil-filled heyday or his tragic and precipitous decline, the boy from Brooklyn’s influence on the game cannot be overstated. He was this country’s giant, a de facto Cold War weapon under unspeakable pressure who eventually (some would say inevitably) cracked.
Brin-Jonathan Butler made his bones as a boxing writer, producing pugilistic prose biographical and autobiographical alike. He has written about Cuban legends like Guillermo Rigondeaux and American icons like Mike Tyson. If it sounds like he has a bit of Hemingway about him, well, his 2015 memoir “The Domino Diaries” is subtitled “My Decade Boxing with Olympic Champions and Chasing Hemingway’s Ghost in the Last Days of Castro’s Cuba,” so yeah – there’s plenty of Papa here.
What seems on the surface to be an odd fit is actually ideal when you think about it. While chess is a cerebral exercise and boxing is a physical one, the two share common ground. There’s the visceral, man-to-man nature of both; at their core, both are contests of will. Both are about exerting your strength over your opponent. Both necessitate strategies far beyond what the layperson observes upon the surface. And both are extremely difficult to master at the highest level.
What Butler does so magnificently in “The Grandmaster” is capture the intensity inherent to high-level competition. Just because Carlsen and Karjakin don’t physically come to blows doesn’t mean that brutality is absent. Chess of this magnitude is as combative as any other competitive endeavor; there’s a reason that chess is so often utilized as an analog for warfare.
“The Grandmaster” is compelling reading, both in terms of the depth of its subject matter and the spare muscularity of its prose. It is both paean and exposé, a both-sides deep dive into a world that not many truly understand. While the chessboard might only exist in black and white, Butler’s book offers up unexpected shades of gray.
“Chess is everything: art, science and sport.” – Anatoly Karpov
The game of chess is one with an ancient history. The game has been played for hundreds of years by millions of people from all corners of the globe. It is buoyed by its universality and its basic meritocratic structure – the more skilled player almost always wins.
You would think such a game would have deep appeal to the American psyche. That isn’t the case, however – not since the too-brief domination of the world stage by Bobby Fischer back in the 1970s has the United States paid much attention to the game.
But when the World Chess Championship landed in New York City in 2016, Brin-Jonathan Butler was there for it. His chronicle of that battle between Norwegian wunderkind Magnus Carlsen and Russian Sergey Karjakin - the first WCC contested on American soil in two decades - is titled “The Grandmaster: Magnus Carlsen and the Match That Made Chess Great Again.”
It’s an insider’s look at a match that was considered almost a foregone conclusion at the onset before turning into a battle for the ages featuring one of the greatest finishes in chess history. It is also an examination of the history of the game as well as the state of chess today, both here and abroad.
It was the first week of November in 2016. The recent Presidential election had New York City in tumult. But at the city’s South Street Seaport, a different kind of energy was bubbling. For the first time since 1995, the championship of the chess world was going to be decided in the United States.
On one side was the Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, the reigning world champion. Carlsen was viewed as a potential breakout star, a player who could serve as a face of the game. On the other was Sergey Karjakin, a Russian whose star power didn’t match Carlsen’s, but whose tenacious game and competitive streak earned him a spot at the table.
Both men were elite competitors, but Carlsen was expected to triumph without much difficulty. What happened instead was a hard-fought, grueling match – one that made it all the way to sudden death.
Alongside his tension-soaked recounting of the championship faceoff, Butler spends time investigating the game itself. We learn about its history in the United States in general and in New York City in particular. The role of computers in the game - from the first rudimentary programs to the supercomputer Deep Blue to the unbeatable chess simulators of today - is investigated. Butler speaks to people who orbit in various chess circles – chess club owners and hustlers alike. He explores the relationship that certain famous figures had with the game – the esteem it held in the eyes of notables like Stanley Kubrick and Humphrey Bogart.
And looming over it all is the shadow of Bobby Fischer.
No conversation about chess in America is complete without acknowledging the legacy of the country’s greatest player. Whether discussing Fischer’s meteoric rise, his turmoil-filled heyday or his tragic and precipitous decline, the boy from Brooklyn’s influence on the game cannot be overstated. He was this country’s giant, a de facto Cold War weapon under unspeakable pressure who eventually (some would say inevitably) cracked.
Brin-Jonathan Butler made his bones as a boxing writer, producing pugilistic prose biographical and autobiographical alike. He has written about Cuban legends like Guillermo Rigondeaux and American icons like Mike Tyson. If it sounds like he has a bit of Hemingway about him, well, his 2015 memoir “The Domino Diaries” is subtitled “My Decade Boxing with Olympic Champions and Chasing Hemingway’s Ghost in the Last Days of Castro’s Cuba,” so yeah – there’s plenty of Papa here.
What seems on the surface to be an odd fit is actually ideal when you think about it. While chess is a cerebral exercise and boxing is a physical one, the two share common ground. There’s the visceral, man-to-man nature of both; at their core, both are contests of will. Both are about exerting your strength over your opponent. Both necessitate strategies far beyond what the layperson observes upon the surface. And both are extremely difficult to master at the highest level.
What Butler does so magnificently in “The Grandmaster” is capture the intensity inherent to high-level competition. Just because Carlsen and Karjakin don’t physically come to blows doesn’t mean that brutality is absent. Chess of this magnitude is as combative as any other competitive endeavor; there’s a reason that chess is so often utilized as an analog for warfare.
“The Grandmaster” is compelling reading, both in terms of the depth of its subject matter and the spare muscularity of its prose. It is both paean and exposé, a both-sides deep dive into a world that not many truly understand. While the chessboard might only exist in black and white, Butler’s book offers up unexpected shades of gray.
June 16, 2019
The Grandmaster is one of the quickest 200-page books I've read. Although the Carlsen-Karjakin match is the catalyst for Butler's book, it's not his primary subject. Rather, The Grandmaster is a much broader look at the ways in which chess cultivates obsession and madness in grandmasters and novices alike, and the book is better for this broad focus.
February 4, 2020
"...Everything you never imagined you wanted to know about chess" says Kirkus Reviews, and how right that is.
I picked this up because I know the author's brother, and because it was recently shortlisted by Margaret Atwood. What a surprise when I learned it was non-fiction, about a chess tournament. But it's really about everything else - travel, family, politics, the human condition, sports. Can't recommend it highly enough.
I picked this up because I know the author's brother, and because it was recently shortlisted by Margaret Atwood. What a surprise when I learned it was non-fiction, about a chess tournament. But it's really about everything else - travel, family, politics, the human condition, sports. Can't recommend it highly enough.
January 10, 2019
This is a pretty epic short book/long article: you've got two great main characters, lots of on-site reporting and detail, a historical overview of the sport of chess in the 20th century, and an explanation for why the author is the person who should be writing this book (chess has always been a big part of his unusual upbringing), etc. It's a fast and compelling read, which is exactly what I want from these sorts of stories.
October 17, 2019
Pretty fascinating read that I feel enhanced my reading of Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. A very specific focus on a point in history in the middle of the mad times in which we live.
January 16, 2025
In many ways similar to "The Immortal Game," but better written.
December 21, 2018
I’ll start with the TL;DR: You should definitely read this book.
Admittedly, I’m a huge fan of Butler’s work. I initially fell in love with his writing style and beautiful use of words when reading “A Cuban Boxer’s Journey,” and became enamored with the idea of visiting Cuba after finishing “The Domino Diaries.” That being said, even *I* felt trepidation when I learned a couple of years ago that he was working on a book about chess.
Chess? Ugh, sounds boring.
If it’s not abundantly clear by this point, I’m not a chess player. As a matter of fact, people have stopped trying to teach me how to play chess. But after reading this book I’m excited about learning again. Butler writes about chess in such a beautiful and humorous manner so as to engage even the most chess-illiterate.
I had a great time reading about all of the different characters in chess as well as the historical background that Butler provided. It’s true that the book lacked wall-to-wall coverage of the actual match, but there are chess websites and publications for that. And the weaving in of the political events at that time provided a backdrop for comparisons that Butler executed with genius.
I couldn’t put this book down and when I had to I was sad. And not only that, it actually got me excited about CHESS, of all things.
Admittedly, I’m a huge fan of Butler’s work. I initially fell in love with his writing style and beautiful use of words when reading “A Cuban Boxer’s Journey,” and became enamored with the idea of visiting Cuba after finishing “The Domino Diaries.” That being said, even *I* felt trepidation when I learned a couple of years ago that he was working on a book about chess.
Chess? Ugh, sounds boring.
If it’s not abundantly clear by this point, I’m not a chess player. As a matter of fact, people have stopped trying to teach me how to play chess. But after reading this book I’m excited about learning again. Butler writes about chess in such a beautiful and humorous manner so as to engage even the most chess-illiterate.
I had a great time reading about all of the different characters in chess as well as the historical background that Butler provided. It’s true that the book lacked wall-to-wall coverage of the actual match, but there are chess websites and publications for that. And the weaving in of the political events at that time provided a backdrop for comparisons that Butler executed with genius.
I couldn’t put this book down and when I had to I was sad. And not only that, it actually got me excited about CHESS, of all things.
February 12, 2020
Rather disappointing. Sure there was some coverage of the Carlsen-Karjakin World Chess Championship in New York in 2016 and a bit of depth on Carlsen. However, the bulk of the book seemed more focused on the past history of chess, it's champions, and how many of them went crazy (and was the devotion to chess to blame and could Carlsen be headed for this fate). Obviously written for non-chess players since there are no game scores or even a chess diagram to illustrate the moves and the point of some descriptions of positions. I guess the author figures that his audience wouldn't understand.
And then there was the book's subtitle. Sure there was some hype about the Championship and it seemed aimed at an attempt to "make chess great again," but not much of the text was devoted to the marketing that was put into promoting the match. Did anything really come of that effort? Nothing mentioned in the book past the outcome of the match. Since I didn't even know this match was going on at the time and 10 of the 12 regular games ended in draws, I think the subtitle should be "...the Match That Could Have Made Chess Great Again."
Well-written, but not for those that have played chess for any length of time.
And then there was the book's subtitle. Sure there was some hype about the Championship and it seemed aimed at an attempt to "make chess great again," but not much of the text was devoted to the marketing that was put into promoting the match. Did anything really come of that effort? Nothing mentioned in the book past the outcome of the match. Since I didn't even know this match was going on at the time and 10 of the 12 regular games ended in draws, I think the subtitle should be "...the Match That Could Have Made Chess Great Again."
Well-written, but not for those that have played chess for any length of time.
January 23, 2022
For the record: In 2016, I attended matches 2 and 4 between Magnus and Sergey in New York city. I hardly would describe it as "the Match that MADE CHESS GREAT AGAIN" (re. the writer's reference to the 1971 World Chess Championship match, when Bobby Fischer defeated Boris Spassky (televised by PBS, with Shelby Lyman as the host). When they played, Sergey wasn't considered to be the best candidate to play for a world chess championship.
Nevertheless, had the challenger been able tp hold onto to his one game lead, the match could very well have ended up a total bomb.
But, the author has an excellent point. Why in a sport that 600 million people play, isn't the name Magnus Carlson as recognizable as professional soccer, tennis or golf players? Or, more appropriately as marketable?
Marketability aside, How is it that one person can totally dominate a game for so long?
Note: I also attended matches 2 and 3 of the 2018 World Championship, in London which were won by Magnus when he defeated Caruana Fabiano. A far more worthy opponent. As so theoretically was, Ian Nepomniachtchi. In the December 2021 World Championship match in Dubai had disastrous results for Ian,
And, lastly, will the concentrated effort to improve over long periods of time lead to an inevitable mental breakdown?
Good questions and this is a very good book for chess fans everywhere.
Nevertheless, had the challenger been able tp hold onto to his one game lead, the match could very well have ended up a total bomb.
But, the author has an excellent point. Why in a sport that 600 million people play, isn't the name Magnus Carlson as recognizable as professional soccer, tennis or golf players? Or, more appropriately as marketable?
Marketability aside, How is it that one person can totally dominate a game for so long?
Note: I also attended matches 2 and 3 of the 2018 World Championship, in London which were won by Magnus when he defeated Caruana Fabiano. A far more worthy opponent. As so theoretically was, Ian Nepomniachtchi. In the December 2021 World Championship match in Dubai had disastrous results for Ian,
And, lastly, will the concentrated effort to improve over long periods of time lead to an inevitable mental breakdown?
Good questions and this is a very good book for chess fans everywhere.
July 14, 2019
My heart gives this four stars and my brain gives it three. It's an extended profile of the 2016 chess world championship in NYC. Butler goes off on all sorts of interesting detours into the dark corners of the chess world, including chess hustlers, chess addicts who have thrown their lives away, a brief look at a compulsive gambler and world backgammon champion "Backgammon Falafel," the strange upbringing of ranked female player Judit Polgar and more. Although it definitely felt like an extended magazine piece for Outside or maybe Vice, I couldn't put it down and read it in two days while camping, much to my wife's annoyance. Of course he compares Magnus to Fischer, at great length, and brings up the politics of 2016, particularly Trump, whom Carlsen acknowledged by opening one game with "The Trompowsky" I would include some of the better quotes but it's a library copy and I'm too lazy to dig them up.
October 6, 2024
Ostensibly, this is a report from a sportswriter on the World Chess Championship of 2016, but it is so much more. The author brings the reader along on his own experiences and adventures in the chess world and the story becomes so much more than a story. He manages to describe both the line between genius and madness and the strange world of the chess community, where it's only the player and the black-and-white jungle with humor and affection, until describing someone as resembling a disgruntled electric eel has the reader suddenly remembering the people in his own life who could be described the same way.
June 16, 2025
An interesting insight, covering a lot of the history behind the game at the highest level with a lot of focus on Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov as well as the two players in the match that serves as the framing device as well as the ostensible main focus, and numerous asides discussing other various GMs over the years.
The writing is engaging and accessible, not requiring much chess knowledge to enjoy, focused as it is on the psychology behind chess, the obsession it sparks in people and the history of the world chess championships rather than the nuances of the games themselves.
The writing is engaging and accessible, not requiring much chess knowledge to enjoy, focused as it is on the psychology behind chess, the obsession it sparks in people and the history of the world chess championships rather than the nuances of the games themselves.
July 15, 2025
An interesting account on chess, and discussing how it has over centuries had a magnetic draw on much of the world's population. Magnus' match with Karjakin is merely the backdrop of the book, so if you're looking for the book to be simply about that, you may be disappointed. Instead, Butler deviates from the famous World Champtionship to give the stories of many other chess legends with Bobby Fischer being the most famous one. Only starting to get into the game myself, I had no idea of the history of the game, nor its appeal to so many people and civilizations.
February 27, 2021
2 1/2 stars for this moderately enjoyable, though seemingly hastily written (and poorly edited, if at all!) book about chess. Sporadic stories and asides about some of chess history’s characters were interesting. Author stories about himself, less so. We don’t really get to know Magnus Carlsen too well. And the chess match covered here — the 2016 world championship — was kinda boring. This would have been a better magazine article instead of a book. But it is a quick read.
February 28, 2021
2.5. Quick read, new information to me and some of it very interesting... but the author’s style didn’t create a story that really gained insight into the main characters and I didn’t feel that the strings of the different stories in the book were pulled together very well overall.
January 27, 2022
This is some seriously good sportswriting; the author manages to make a three-week chess tournament feel exciting to an outsider! There are lots of character profiles, and some of these folks can only be described as "real characters."
August 2, 2019
A wonderfully engaging read. A work that explores passion, commitment, obsession, genius and madness through the lens of chess. Well done.
July 26, 2022
очаровательная попытка понять, какого быть на самом верху шахматного мира и почему шахматы становятся обсессией. особенно приятно читаются части про неприсобленность шахматного мира к капитализму и служение в коммьюнити
книга создана для непрофессионалов, так что откройте её, если вас привлекают темы гения, распространения коммерции на разные уголки жизни, стерильного мира шахмат и менее упорядоченного мира шахматистов
книга создана для непрофессионалов, так что откройте её, если вас привлекают темы гения, распространения коммерции на разные уголки жизни, стерильного мира шахмат и менее упорядоченного мира шахматистов
March 3, 2024
4 stars as a lover of stories but 2 stars as a lover of chess.
January 13, 2025
Great story, and very well told by the narrator. It includes a lot of interesting historical info, especially for those interested in chess
April 16, 2025
A surprising analysis of obsession, greatness and the illness of high level competition.
July 26, 2022
More about chess in general than the cover would have you think, but any chess or Magnus lover will totally enjoy this.
December 4, 2021
Brin Jonathan Butler sets out to answer three questions. Those questions are basically why isn't Chess more popular in mainstream culture, what drives Magnus Carlsen, and will Magnus succumb to the same fate as other chess greats such as Bobby Fischer. Unfortunately for the reader, the author spends almost all of the book addressing the first question at the expense of the other two outside of a few pages here and there. In regards to the first question, however, Brin Jonathan Butler fails to address it in a way that makes sense and instead teases out the strange characters and events that surround the chess world rather than to see how culture and chess intersect. We learn more about Fischer than we do Magnus, we learn more about the chess hustlers of Washington Park than we do Sergey Karjakin.
This is not a book about Magnus Carlsen or the 2016 FIDE Championship. It's about one sport journalists first introduction into the world of professional chess. For a sport journalist, the author is obviously biased against chess. For example, he seems incredulous and disturbed that the best chess players in the world want to dominate and humiliate their opposition. This is the same author who brags about interviewing Mike Tyson. What did he expect from the best of a competition? I wouldn't say chess is a sport but it is a competition and those who are the best in any competition want to dominate others, it's not some revelation.
The rest of the book is occupied with the strange characters of chess, Brin-Jontathan Butler meets many interesting people and while those are enlightening, it's not really what I wanted from this book. There are a lot of good things in this book, but like a lot of sport journalists turned authors, it's chaotic, disordered, and not structured in a great way.
This is not a book about Magnus Carlsen or the 2016 FIDE Championship. It's about one sport journalists first introduction into the world of professional chess. For a sport journalist, the author is obviously biased against chess. For example, he seems incredulous and disturbed that the best chess players in the world want to dominate and humiliate their opposition. This is the same author who brags about interviewing Mike Tyson. What did he expect from the best of a competition? I wouldn't say chess is a sport but it is a competition and those who are the best in any competition want to dominate others, it's not some revelation.
The rest of the book is occupied with the strange characters of chess, Brin-Jontathan Butler meets many interesting people and while those are enlightening, it's not really what I wanted from this book. There are a lot of good things in this book, but like a lot of sport journalists turned authors, it's chaotic, disordered, and not structured in a great way.
September 30, 2025
Not much in this book that is about the 2016 World Chess Championship. Next to nothing that anyone with moderate familiarity with Chess would see as being about chess itself.
It is a tale of obsessions and madness. It tells of the madness of Bobby Fischer, Paul Morphy, and a good number of others.
Repeatedly the author returns to Bobby Fischer fighting for the championship against Boris Spassky in 1972. Unfortunately he also speaks of America obsessing over Watergate at the time of the match. Nixon resigned in 1974 and Watergate did not become much of a known scandal until long after the match was over.
In 1972 Bobby Fischer set America on fire with a passion for chess. Fischer ultimately became more and more paranoid. He refused to defend his championship. He left the US and came to hate America. But in 1972 he was considered a hero.
If you are interested in people with unusual passions for a game and how addictive a game could be, this is your book. If you want details on “the match that made chess great again” this is not that book, and I’m not sure this was even the right match. But chess is lighting up YouTube. And even the Podcaster, Lex Fridman has interviewed a series of chess players and personalities in the past few months. Magnus Carlson is among them for an interview that lasts a few hours.
I agreed more with the one and two star reviews than the four and five star reviews. But I gave it 3 since I finished it and as a pure random story, the prose was good and there was adequate entertainment in the tale.
It is a tale of obsessions and madness. It tells of the madness of Bobby Fischer, Paul Morphy, and a good number of others.
Repeatedly the author returns to Bobby Fischer fighting for the championship against Boris Spassky in 1972. Unfortunately he also speaks of America obsessing over Watergate at the time of the match. Nixon resigned in 1974 and Watergate did not become much of a known scandal until long after the match was over.
In 1972 Bobby Fischer set America on fire with a passion for chess. Fischer ultimately became more and more paranoid. He refused to defend his championship. He left the US and came to hate America. But in 1972 he was considered a hero.
If you are interested in people with unusual passions for a game and how addictive a game could be, this is your book. If you want details on “the match that made chess great again” this is not that book, and I’m not sure this was even the right match. But chess is lighting up YouTube. And even the Podcaster, Lex Fridman has interviewed a series of chess players and personalities in the past few months. Magnus Carlson is among them for an interview that lasts a few hours.
I agreed more with the one and two star reviews than the four and five star reviews. But I gave it 3 since I finished it and as a pure random story, the prose was good and there was adequate entertainment in the tale.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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