Magnus Carlsen has been the highest-rated chess player in the world since 2011. His highest rating was 2882 in 2014, currently his rating is 2835. He became world champion in 2013 at age 21, successfully defended his title several times, and earlier this year, he declined to defend his title, which is to say: he's retiring as an undefeated champ. Going out on a high note. And good for him.
Among many other world's-best achievements, Carlsen has the longest unbeaten streak in the history of elite chess, going unbeaten for 125 consecutive games from 2018 to 2020. For my readers who are not chess aficionados, let me clarify: Carlsen did not win 125 games. The majority of elite-level chess games end in draws. Over the course of 125 games, Carlsen had 42 wins, 83 draws and no losses. His longest winning streak during the unbeaten streak was 5 games. And winning 5 games in a row against the best chess players in the world is quite an achievement.
As a wise man once told me, "Chess is a game of mistakes." If your opponent makes a bad enough mistake, and you know how to take advantage of it, you win. If you're aggressive and do something unexpected, maybe you'll shake up your opponent and win, or maybe it'll come back and bite you, maybe you'll over-extend yourself, and your opponent will keep their head, weather the storm, take advantage of your carelessness and beat you. Or maybe neither of you will make any noteworthy mistakes and the game will end in a draw.
A long time ago, before I realized that most Grandmaster games end in draws, I read somewhere that Bobby Fischer's playing style was to try to win every game. This confused me. I thought: why wouldn't you try to win every game? But most top-level players play a little differently: they try very hard not to lose, not to make any mistakes. If they catch a bad mistake by their opponent and win, so much the better.
Carlsen is an extremely precise sort of player. Very few mistakes. Very little rolling of the dice, compared to Fischer. Fewer Queen sacrifices. Less drama.
One of the few top Grandmasters who may have been even more aggressive than Fischer was Mikhail Tal, World Champion from 1960 to 1961. Someone, I wish I could remember who, once wrote that Tal "tried to win every game with every move."
That 125-game unbeaten streak by Carlsen is an amazing achievement, arguably the pinnacle of one of the best careers in the history of chess. But there is another streak in chess history which, in the opinion of many, is much more astounding still: in 1970 and 1971, in the process of beating all the other candidates and thus qualifying to take on Boris Spassky for the world chess championship in 1972, Bobby Fischer won 20 consecutive games.
Some will tell you that he actually won only 19 in a row, since one of his opponents, Oscar Panno, sat out the game in protest of his game against Fischer being rescheduled. I don't think Panno had a chance anyway and that people are giving him way too much credit. His major claim to fame today is this silly protest.
But, po-TAY-to, po-TAH-to, 20 wins in a row or only 19, either way, no one else has come close to what Fischer did there. He won his last 7 games (or "only" 6, if you insist on seeing it that way) in a tournament determining who would be the final 8 players to fight it out for the chance to play Spassky for the world championship.
With the chess world's minds already blown by this winning streak, Fischer went on to beat Taimanov 6-0, six wins, no draws, in the quarter-final match. And commentators, quite accurately, said that nothing like this had ever been seen.
And then Fischer beat Larson 6-0 in the semi-final round. 19 wins in a row.
Then, in the final round, against Tigran Petrosian, who had been world champion from 1963 to 1969, Fischer won the first game. 20 in a row. Then Petrosian, very much the opposite sort of player from Fischer, all caution, sypremely solid, waiting to pounce on the opponent's mistakes, won the second game, and he managed several draws, but Fischer won the match 6 1/2 games to 2 1/2.
And then, in the famous world championship match in Iceland, in what was perhaps a severe case of nerves, or perhaps a bit of understandable burn-out after having played at an unheard-of level for a year and a half, Fischer lost the first 2 games. Many said at the time, well, that's it, that remarkable run is over. Being down 2-0 in a match where he needed 12 1/2 points to win and Spassky needed 12 to keep the title, looked to many like an insurmountable obstacle.
But Fischer won the match 12 1/2 games to 8 1/2.
And that was the end of Fischer's chess career. He made demands for his next match which FIDE, the world chess governing body, were never going to accept. Fischer retired, without officially retiring. In 1992 there was a return match against Spassky which made both players lots of money, and made most of the spectators sad. And that was it, as far as Fischer professional chess career was concerned.
But that run, from the 20-game winning streak to the lopsided end of the world championship match, is just so very far beyond unequaled.
It was like the 1977 Sears Point AMA motorcycle road race. Kenny Roberts was so much better than everyone else in US road racing at that point, that no-one knew HOW much better he was: he would go out to a comfortable lead in each race, and then slow down to a comfortable pace, and as long as his bike didn't break, he won, no drama, easy-peasy.
In 1977 at Sears Point, just as the race was about to start, officials noticed that Roberts' Yamaha was spraying oil from a busted gasket, and so, safety first, they moved him from pole position at the start to the last row, and we got to see some drama.
Roberts started last and four laps later, he was in first place. DiMaggio got base hits in 56 straight games. Mike Tyson laid out the next-best heavyweights in the world in one or two minutes. That's the sort of head-and-shoulders-above-everybody dominance Bobby Fischer displayed at the end of his career.
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