Not even 143,000 people thinking together can beat Magnus Carlsen in chess –

Magnus Carlsen, the popular Chess World Champion, accepted a challenged to play a chess match against more than 143,000 players. The Norwegian Grandmaster took on a team effort and was able to defend a draw, in a match that lasted for 46 days, with online users voting for the next movement on Chess.com.

This isn’t the first time that a prominent chess player accepts to play against the entire world (where, against thousands of users who discuss and vote for the next move), but it has drawn by far the most attention, shattering records (the previous most attended “vs. the World” match was 70,000 people against Vish in 2024).

To fight against Carlsen, 34, a high profile figure with over 1.8 million followers on Instagram, 100,000 signed up, and later 143,000 players ended up taking part in the process, which is deliberately slow: each side has 24 hours to decided the next move, which in the side of “the World”, means discussing and voting. The match lasted for 46 days and 32 moves.

“Overall, The World has played very, very sound chess. Keeping it in the vein of normal chess. It’s not always the best strategy, but it seemed like it worked fine this time”, Magnus said. Carlsen is currently World No. 1 in chess, and has won World Chess Championship five times, as well winning World Rapid Chess Championship five times and, and the reigning World Blitz Chess Championship eight times… although some of those titles have been shared by mutual agreement, something that rarely happens on any other sport.