Team Carlsen: Now We Know
There were really no surprises in this "reveal": Magnus Carlsen's team comprised all the usual suspects, with one new guy. Peter Heine Nielsen was the leader (which was already acknowledged by Carlsen during the match), and long-time assistants Laurent Fressinet (of "too weak, too slow" fame), Jan Gustafsson (since he was nowhere to be found on Chess24, everyone knew he was helping), and Daniil Dubov all helped out. The new guy was Jorden Van Foreest.
Of course, it's also pretty likely that there were other people who were helping in some capacity remotely, perhaps in a less official capacity. If so, we weren't given any information about that.
I'm not sure who was helping Nepo, other than Sergey Karjakin and Nepo's long-time coach Vladimir Potkin, so if any of you know please pass it along. About Karjakin: he was a bit tetchy about Dubov's assisting Carlsen. While the Ukrainian ex-pat seems more Catholic than the Pope when it comes to his love for Russia, and it should be remembered that Dubov has been helping Carlsen for years, I can see his being a little disappointed. It would have been disappointing to learn that, say, Nakamura or So had been helping Carlsen in his match with Caruana. On the other hand, Dubov, great though he is, is not a player on the level of Nakamura or So, or in the Russian context at the level of Karjakin or Grischuk. And, again, he had been working with Carlsen for years, I think even going back to the matches with Anand. So if it had been a player like Jeffery Xiong or Sam Shankland who had been helping Carlsen, and had been doing so for years at the time of the Caruana match, I'd have a harder time getting worked up about it. Maybe it would be nice if he sat that match out, but it seems to me that it would be going above and beyond for him to do so, rather than something he ought to do.
But maybe I'm wrong about this. And maybe it also depends on how tight or loose one sees the national community, if there are political aspects at stake (it wouldn't have been viewed kindly if there were "defectors" in the Spassky-Fischer match or the Karpov-Korchnoi matches, to put it mildly!). But as far as I'm aware there are no serious tensions between Russia and Norway, and it's not as if Nepomniachtchi is the golden boy of Russian chess, their one and only shining star in an otherwise chess-poor nation.
Anyway, some of my readers are Russian, and many of you are overseas and much closer to Russia than I am, and are bound to have better-informed ideas on this matter than I do. What do you think?
Reader Comments (3)
Peter Leko helped Ian.
Anyways, re Russia, Hammer said he was available for future challengers against Carlsen which might be even a little more outlandish since he formally was on Team Carlsen for more than one WC Match. But then Peter Heine Nielsen did sit out the Anand Carlsen matches.
[DM: Right re PHN. But that was because he had worked with Anand for years. I don't think Karjakin was necessarily saying that Dubov should help Nepo - that would be inappropriate. I just think/suspect that he felt Dubov should sit this one out.]
Karjakin was born into a Russian-speaking family in Crimea when it was a part of the USSR.
I don't believe that he should be obliged to identify with or support Ukrainian nationalism vis-à-vis Russia.
Conflicts over nationalism are nothing new in chess. Players from Armenia and Azerbaijan have shown that.
While Russia and Norway have no direct conflict, Russia has a conflict with NATO over NATO's potential expansion eastward.
Norway's a member of NATO. I don't think, however, that Karjakin's motivated by any anti-Norwegian sentiment.
"Dubov, great though he is, is not a player on the level of Nakamura or So, or in the Russian context at the level of Karjakin or Grischuk."
FIDE ratings (December 2021):
Dubov 2720, Nakamura 2736, Karjakin 2743 ,Grischuk 2764, So 2772
I have no objection to Dubov being a second of Carlsen. Yet I suspect that many people who approve of that would
object on nationalistic grounds to some players being the seconds of some players from perceived 'hostile' countries.
Wang Hao (now retired) is a friend and was a second of Aronian.
Let's suppose that Aronian (now representing the USA) were to play a match against Ding Liren for the right to challenge Carlsen.
Would Wang Hao again help Aronian? What if Jeffery Xiong, for instance, became one of Ding Liren's seconds?
Would not some Americans object to that and regard Jeffery Xiong as 'disloyal' to the USA?
[DM: I did acknowledge the "disappointment" idea. But "disloyal" to the USA? I dunno. If I wanted to waste emotional energy on this sort of thing, I'd be far more aggravated about all the world's athletes who train here, live here, and sell products here...and then represent their home countries in the Olympics. Or all the tennis players (e.g. from Russia) who grow up in Florida to get trained at the Nick Bolletieri academy, never leave, get rich here, but represent "their" countries in grand slams. Or American universities that give scholarships to athletes from other countries but not to American students, because they are after all institutions of higher learning. (Rolls eyes)]
Dubov's response: https://www.championat.com/other/article-4542199-otkrovennoe-intervyu-s-pomoschnikom-karlsena-rossiyaninom-daniilom-dubovym-o-skandale-yane-nepomnyaschem-i-sbornoj-rossii.html
Nepo said in the final press conference that he used the same team for Candidates, which is presumably Potkin, Leko, Khairullin, and Karjakin.