This is all the words Fabiano Caruana said during his interview with Levy Rozman (GothamChess) before the 2024 Candidates. Check out Caruana’s passion for chess, tennis, boxing, and more.
Levy: I’m here with Grandmaster Fabiano Caruana, the second highest-rated player in the world at 2803, and the owner of the third-highest rating of all time at 2851.3 I think. Fabi, thank you so much for joining me.
Fabi: Thanks for having me, Levy.
Levy: How do you feel about, let’s say, one and a half days away from the start of the 2024 Candidates? What are the emotions like right now?
Fabi: It’s interesting. I mean, every time I play, there are different emotions. Every time it does feel different. I can’t say that I’m feeling huge pressure yet, but I know that will come as the tournament progresses. You never know what to expect with this tournament. It’s like any tournament basically, but even more so when there’s so much at stake and basically only one place matters. There will be a lot of unpredictability, and nerves will play a huge role for everyone.
Levy: I’ve watched a lot of your interviews, and my favorite sport is fighting. I’ve listened to fighters talk up until two minutes before they have to leave and finally get in there. When it all shuts off, there’s like a million thoughts running through people’s heads, right? The biggest fear is you get exhausted or there’s like, you know, you’re going to get embarrassed and you’re going to get knocked out. Nobody’s punching each other here, but this type of whirlwind of thoughts. I think I’ve heard you say once you get there, it also kind of shuts off. You’re back in game mode, right? It’s all the thoughts before the tournament begins.
Fabi: Yeah, I think the main thing is that there was a lot of concern before about what could happen because everything could go wrong, and you see all the worst scenarios, and also, you imagine that your opponents will always play perfectly. Then once you get to the board, you realize that nothing is clear, nothing’s easy, and you’re basically just in that mode where you play moves and you’re trying to survive move by move because you can’t really worry about like, what’s the evaluation, am I going to lose, is my opponent going to play all the perfect moves?
You just kind of be in the flow of the game. So especially when it comes to opening preparation, which is such an integral part of chess now, you always see like, okay, my opponent can make all these perfect moves, and what am I going to do, and I have all these opening problems and so on. That’s what everyone is thinking, whether they say it or not. But once you get to the board, you realize we’re just playing a game. I don’t remember half the things I checked. My opponent is probably in the same position, and it’s probably going to come down to who’s playing better regardless. It’s difficult to have that presence of mind before the event, but once you look back on it, that’s almost always the case.
Levy: Amazing. Let’s hit the pause button really quick on the candidates themselves and go back to the World Championship match. You do have the unique experience of playing a World Championship match and won against Magnus, not against Ding Liren like Ian obviously has played against Magnus as well. But you played against Magnus, and you are the only person also not to lose a game in the classical portion of the World Chess Championship. Can you take me back to that time and just tell me and the people watching, like, the candidates is the most stressful tournament, but the match is the match. How did it feel to play both of those and the preparation, the nerves, everything, like the training camp leading up to both of those major events?
I think that there are some ways in which a World Championship match is easier than the candidates and also ways where it’s more stressful because you’re at the finish line basically. The ways in which it’s easier is that your goal is a little bit more clear-cut. It’s just you have to be stronger than your opponent, while here you have to be stronger than seven other people, and one of them could run away with it, right? Someone could win all their games, while in a match, it’s only you against them. So you don’t have to worry about, will all my other player… will all the other players collapse against this one particular player, and suddenly I’m playing catch up.
In that sense, a match has a more clear-cut goal and finish line, while the candidates, you don’t always know what you’re playing for in terms of, do I sometimes have to go all out? Do I have to try to win games? I have to try to be very solid. It’s less clear-cut in that sense. So the candidates does have its unique strategy, unique challenges, and strategies. And I would also say, generally speaking, the chance of winning the candidates should be lower than winning the World Championship match once you get there, just because of the amount of people who are here, and they all have their chances.
Some players certainly have better chances than others, but definitely you would have to give every player in this tournament a certain share of the odds. Yeah, both are super stressful. I mean, I think I handled the stress in some candidates well and some candidates not so well, like specifically the last candidates. Just my way that I handled the stress and the challenge of dealing with pressure in that candidates, I have to say I did a very poor job while in 2018, although I didn’t do it perfectly when I won the candidates, I did overall do a good job, like in the most critical moments, although I did lose that game to Sergey in the 12th round, so you can say I didn’t do that very well.
But still, after that, I did do my utmost in the last two rounds. But a lot also comes down to circumstance. Like, if I look back on when I won 2018, I was playing Levon in the 13th round, and we had a rest day before that, and we were preparing for two openings. One was the Berlin, one was the Marshall. Leon’s two main openings, the Marshall, we had an idea which ended up appearing on the board. I got a big advantage and I won. The Berlin, we had no idea, so it was very much a 50/50, like I get to the board and I’m just hoping don’t play Knight F6 on the third move or I have no idea what I’m going to do, and maybe I wouldn’t have won that game, probably not, and I would have had to win the last round, and, you know, history might have changed for that tournament. Yeah, very much, things are up to circumstance in some sense, but generally speaking, the player who plays best wins.
I think that, like in the last two candidates and especially in the last one, we have to say that Yan was head and shoulders above the other players. In the previous one, it was a little bit more close. Like you could say, okay, Maxime had his moments, other players had their moments, but overall, we can say that Yan was the best player. Again, that one was also weird, though it was interrupted. There was like a year off, right? And so, yeah, that was a very strange tournament, and I think that a lot of that tournament really did depend on the circumstances Covid-19, and the tournament being postponed halfway, which is a really weird story also because we heard before the tournament that it would be postponed halfway.
Levy: Before?
Fabi: Yeah, like we had heard before the tournament, maybe it’ll be postponed halfway, do you want to maybe not play? But we had already traveled to Russia. I was like, okay, I mean, we’re already here. Wow, and that was the one RAB dropped out of, yeah, yeah, Tamar dropped out and was replaced by Maxime a week before the event, yeah, which I have to say Tamar did basically have to, right? Like when he was complaining that this tournament probably shouldn’t be happening at this period, it was probably correct because you shouldn’t have a tournament that could or could be canceled at any moment.
Levy: But obviously now we’re here, and this candidates is a little bit different in the sense that, well, let’s just start with it’s your fourth one. I mean, technically you have more experience than everybody, I think, Hikaru’s in the third. It’s Nepo’s third. Obviously, he had won two. Half the field is really young. Three of the players are super young. Two of the players are also in their first candidates, but they’re both 19. So it’s a… it feels like a huge wild card of the candidates. Does it feel that way to you?
Yeah, if I think back to previous candidates, probably the players were more experienced, a bit older compared to this one. I don’t know what effect that will have on the tournament, like how the young players will perform, how the older guys will perform. I guess I’m counted among the older guys. How experience will matter, and yeah, you have the guys who are a bit like, let’s say, closer to 30 like okay, and Vidit, but who haven’t played the candidates so you can say they’re not super experienced in terms of this, but I don’t know if experience matters.
Like I’ve said this, I think, in the past, my first candidates, I had zero experience, very naive preparation, I would say looking back, but I did get very close to winning it, and even without the experience, somehow I was ready in some sense, and in my last candidates, with all the experience in the world, you can say, didn’t really play very well overall, and I didn’t handle the pressure well.
So will experience matter? I don’t know. I also have very little playing experience against some of the guys like I’ve played Pragg in four classical games, three or four, I’ve played Vidit maybe in just one classical game, and Abasov in two. And of course, against players like Hikaru, Alireza, and Ian, I’ve played like a million games, especially Hikaru. So it’ll be interesting. I don’t have the most experience against the young guys like I’ve started to play them more and more. Of course, they’re really top players, Pragg and Gukesh, I mean, and Alireza. I don’t know, do we count him as a young guy anymore?
Levy: Yeah, I don’t know, right? He is very young, but he has been playing top tournaments for the last four years, so it’s hard to say. You know, after the pandemic, a lot of people went up, like a lot of people had incubated knowledge and all this, and they went up. I was fascinated. I didn’t quite realize to what degree. There’s no easy way to phrase it, and now you’re 2800, so I hope you excuse the way I phrase it. Like your rating fell a lot. I was shocked, and I think I heard you talk about it in places, but that’s a wild ride down, right? And that entire time, did you know in the back of your mind, “I was 2850, it’s just a matter of time until I’m back,” or did you really truly sort of fall out of love with the game and have to relight a fire? Like, what happened, and what happened on the way down, and how are we back to 2803, and the world is calling you the favorite in the tournament, right? Like, I’m not to pour these thoughts into your head, but how do you go down, and how did you reemerge?
I wasn’t too surprised I lost my rating. I was sort of expecting it in 2021. Like, 2020, I stopped working after the candidates. After the first, like, I was preparing a lot before the candidates, had a lot of training. Then everything gets postponed, and from that period, I forget exactly the date, but mid-March, let’s say, or late March, until the next time that we started preparing for the same candidates tournament, which was January 2021 that we started again, I basically didn’t look at chess.
So okay, if you don’t look at chess for almost a year, then and then in 2021, I started to realize that the people who I felt I had some edge over, I no longer felt like I had any edge over them. Like, let’s say Anish started to feel like he was really gaining some momentum, and Ian as well, he went from being, we could say, sort of an underdog in the candidates to winning the candidates, and I didn’t feel like I was any stronger than him. And other players as well who were playing, like Maxime, Gukesh and so on.
I realized that okay, if I’m not feeling like I’m stronger than any of these players, then there’s probably a reason for that, and probably our ratings will at some point come together, or maybe I’ll be passed, and that’s kind of what happened over 2021. I also dealt with a lot of illness in 2021. Nothing super serious, but as it turned out, but stuff which probably wasn’t good for my chess as well. And so I wasn’t surprised, and then 2022, I started to really ramp up the preparation for candidates again. I somehow lucked my way in by getting second place in the Grand Swiss, so I qualified for candidates again, started to prepare quite a lot. I would say like very serious prep for the last candidates, but it just didn’t work out.
And then after that, I sort of lost my motivation again for a while and had some… yeah, like serious follow my rating from the Olympiad, losing a lot of rating there, from the candidates, complete collapse. And after that, I started to like come back a little bit, at least I found my footing again. Like I wasn’t collapsing psychologically anymore, which is already a good start.
I mean, you can have all the preparation in the world, but if you’re not there mentally, then it’s probably going to go wrong, and that’s what happened to me over the last year, let’s say. I kind of found my form in some ways. It was up and down, but I did have a number of quite good tournaments, and overall, I was happy with my level in classical chess. And I won the Sinquefield Cup. I think I played well there and Bucharest and so on.
So it is good to feel like I’m playing well again. I still view chess very differently in like how chess is than a few years ago. I think that there was like a clear divide of players a few years ago, and now the divide is much less clear. Everyone is sort of good; everyone has good openings; everyone has good understanding. Like the overall level has increased. And maybe not like the overall practical level, like once you get in the game, people start to make mistakes.
But the level like from the start, like people get a very good head start in the game just from general opening knowledge and understanding of positions. And it’s much harder to make headway against players who in the past you might have thought, “This is someone who I should beat.” And now I never have this feeling before a game like, “I should beat this player.” It just feels like, “Okay, I’ll try to get a game, and then we’ll see what happens.”
But I don’t think I’ve ever had this emotion in recent times like, “This is a game where it’s mine to win.” While if you told me a few years ago, like, “I’m playing someone who’s like 2720 with the white pieces,” I would think like, “I have to win this game.” Yeah, so things have changed very differentially in that sense.
Levy: I spoke to Magnus during the Champions Chess Tour final, and he always speaks, especially in classical chess, there is nobody in the world who challenged them as much as you, right? He has said this on many occasions, and I sort of get the sense that over the last whatever it is almost 13 years, 14 years in the Magnus reign, a lot of the top players are contending for top 10 spots for invitations and just in general, relatively happy with top five finishes. I think, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you’re in a unique position where you had a legitimate claim, especially on certain days and periods, to being the best player in the world. Do you feel like at some point over the last few years that was your goal? Your goal was not just to get into a match and that’s that. Your goal was to be the number one player and be better than Magnus?
Well, I think when we were younger, it was also a bit different. Like, let’s say he’s two years older than me, and when we were in our early to mid-20s, I didn’t think about this stuff at all. Like, I was just playing. I really wasn’t thinking about my place in the Chess World or becoming world champion.
Like when I missed out on the 2016 World Championship, I had to beat Sergey with black pieces in the last round of the candidates. It was quite a long shot, but I was pretty close to winning that tournament. If a few other things had gone well, like let’s say if I had beaten Peter Svidler in the 13th round. And I think a lot of people around me felt like, “Okay, you missed a huge chance.”
And I really wasn’t thinking about the world championship at that time, sure. Those thoughts come a little bit later. I think at some point, you realize, “Okay, there is maybe more limited time.” You know, it’s you don’t have all the chances in the world, right? You’re not going to be playing chess forever. Although I don’t know how long I’ll be playing chess, but it’s like you start to have, “Okay, let’s try to take our chances.”
But when you’re younger, like I assume, although I don’t know how it is for some of the guys playing this tournament, but if you’re like 17 years old, you probably think that you’re going to be playing chess forever, yeah? And you’re going to be playing like the next 20 candidate tournaments, and you don’t think like this is an urgent matter. Although, you’ve spoken to (Gashimov?), and maybe he has a different view, but he’s next.
That’s how I imagine and how I felt when I was a young player, trying to come up into the world rankings for the first time and playing these top tournaments. I was just happy to be there at the start because it wasn’t even a guarantee that I would be a top player. If I go back to when I was 18, 19, and I first broke through to the top 10 list, like many people or even most people were surprised that I even made it there. And it was maybe a surprise for me as well.
Then you kind of get accustomed to it, and you start to think, you get those thoughts in your head like, “Okay, I can be world champion. I can try to win the candidates.” And eventually, it did happen for me that I won the candidates and I was there. But yeah, it also feels like a distant memory at this point, six years ago. I mean, I can’t formulate all my emotions during that time.
And yeah, I don’t know. Some days I think, “Okay, I probably missed a huge chance.” Like if I had taken this chance against Magnus or that chance. On the other hand, if I had won that match, then he would probably think, “Well, how could I not win game one?” Or how could he not? He had some also very big advantages in that match. So, I try not to look at it as like, “I missed this huge chance,” because okay, a million things could have gone differently. I could have lost the first game, and you know, you lose the first game of white, you don’t feel too good about your chances. But yeah, it’s been a long time. Of course.
Levy: On a lighter note, I’ve been asking everybody today, you’re obviously left chess, and you’re very, very good at chess. What if anything is there anything in your life that you really love, but you’re really bad at?
I love many things that I’m terrible at, and I wish I were good at them. Like any, I love tennis. I love watching tennis players play, and I’m amazed at what they do. And it always looks easy when you look at them, right? And then you actually hold a racket, and everything is off. Just everything is wrong. You play tennis like I have played, and I’ve taken maybe 50 hours of lessons. Okay, and I’m very bad.
Levy: What’s your tennis ELO?
Fabi: I mean, 1200.
Levy: It’s better than me. I’m 800. You know, so that’s pretty good, Carlsen’s at 1300, so we might have to set this up.
Fabi: I heard that he’s like decent, so if he’s 1300, I’m probably lower than 1200, but whatever it is, like it’s not a level where I’m going to be beating too many people except people who have just started. So, very bad. And I really wish I could be good. And there are many other things which I haven’t even tried, but I do wish I could be good. Like, I wish I could be a good musician. Okay, I’ve never tried to practice an instrument, so I can’t even say that I’ve even made the effort, you know, to be good. Once chess is over, will you play guitar, piano? No, it’s too late.
Levy: But not like as a profession, but just for fun?
Fabi: Maybe someday. I haven’t thought about it too much. I mean, there’s like a million things that I would like to try and have dabbled in a tiny bit and realized that it’s like sometimes you realize you can get better at something, and there sometimes you realize that no matter how much I practice, yeah, I can get better, but I’ll never be good. Tennis, one of those things for me.
Levy: Is it worth doing hobbies that you can’t improve at?
Fabi: Oh, I think it’s great.
Levy: Okay, yeah, yeah, I didn’t know if you were positive or negative about it.
Fabi: No, I like… I’m glad that I took up tennis, for example. In the worst case, it’s just a de-stressing sort of good physical activity, which is healthy, and some hobby that you can do with your friends. Like that’s in the absolute worst case. In the best case, you actually get good, and there are a number of chess players who are quite remarkably good at tennis as well. I’m not among them, of course.
But there are like, (Maier?) is very good. Sebastian, yeah, the French Grandmaster, yeah. And from American players, I think that Josh Friedel is quite good. Like, I think tournament level, I mean, say like 2200, something like that.
Levy: Wow, that is very good. And I’ve seen you post stuff with boxing. What’s going on? Is that just exercise or…?
For me, it’s just exercise. I’ve taken maybe 10 hours of lessons. Okay, if that, maybe around that.
Levy: It’s a good workout, right?
Fabi: It’s yeah, it’s a really good workout. It’s really tough. But for me, it’s just, I don’t want to fight. Yeah, I like the conditioning part of it, yes. But I really don’t want to fight anyone.
Levy: No, we definitely talked about that a little bit. I asked you for the price and to chess boxing, but there won’t be… there’s always a price. Oh, of course, there’s always a price. I’ll let you go. I guess the last thing that I will ask of you is if you have any thoughts for the fans who are going to watch back home. There are going to be a lot of fans watching this tournament, specifically you for sure. So, any words for them?
Fabi: Yeah, I hope that it’s a good spectacle. I hope that I play well, and that I appreciate my fans. They’ve gone through the difficult times with me, so I hope that this is a good time.
Levy: Fabi, I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Fabi: Thank you.
Levy: And all the best in the tournament.
Fabi: Thanks.