'Complete collapse of my nervous system': Magnus Carlsen opens up on tough Las Vegas stint of Freestyle Chess Tour

After finishing fifth in Group White and being eliminated from contention for winning the Las Vegas event of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour, Magnus Carlsen bounced back with two dominating wins against India’s Vidit Gujrathi on Friday. In the follow-up, Carlsen revealed that he had suffered a “complete collapse of his nervous system” on the first day of the event and was not happy about not being able to communicate with his wife, Ella or longtime coach Peter Heine Nielsen during the rounds.

The tournament format had the top four players from Group White and Group Black advancing to the Upper Bracket quarterfinals. The remaining eight players competed in the Lower Bracket. India’s Arjun Erigaisi and Praggnanandhaa made it to the Upper Bracket, while Magnus Carlsen and Vidit Gujrathi were left in the Lower Bracket. Carsen, who suffered a crushing loss to Praggnanandhaa on Day 1 of the event has bounced back strongly in the Lower Bracket, beating Vidit 2-0 to advance. This win eliminated Vidit from the event, he finished joint 13th with four others.

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Magnus Carlsen suffers nervous system collapse

Speaking after the match, Carlsen explained what transpired on Thursday that led to the collapse of his nervous system.

“I think it started well yesterday. I felt all right, relatively rested at least compared to other days. And then I don’t know, I didn’t enjoy the whole process of just being pretty isolated there for many, many hours and not being able to talk to Peter or Ella in between rounds and not being able to to use my devices and so on. What happened then was just kind of a complete collapse of my nervous system,” Carlsen told the YouTube handle of Freestyle Chess after his win over Vidit.

“I could have scraped through of course with some help but it would have been completely underserved. So, it was a complete collapse and yeah, sometimes you have one bad day and I’ve had that in Freestyle before in the preliminaries, but then there’s been a bit of a wider margin to get through. This time it wasn’t. It’s not an excuse. I should make it regardless.”

He said he wanted to talk to his wife Ella and his longtime coach Heine Nielsen, to get out of the shackles.

“I just wanted to get out of the bubble, especially when things start going south a little bit. I feel like I’m just kind of left in my own head a little bit and it would have been probably a little bit easier to shake off if I could talk to somebody very familiar,” Carlsen explained.

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Carlsen’s shift after elimination

The pressure was off his shoulders after getting eliminated from title contention, and then he resorted to playing it for the love of the sport.

“It’s been a thing recently that when things are going well, I play really well and then I’m not really able to sort of change bad trends. And when sort of my nervous system starts collapsing, then it’s all quite bad. I have bad days in pretty much every tournament. It’s just, you know, sometimes they happen at inopportune moments,” Carlsen said.

“I haven’t felt — in Zagreb (at SuperUnited Rapid and Blitz Croatia tournament) or here — at the top of at the top of my game, but at least, now that there’s zero pressure that I don’t have anything to play for, at least I can maybe enjoy the games a little bit more. Today more than anything else, I was just trying to play fun chess and play dynamically from the start and that worked out well. So that’s the advantage of playing Freestyle Chess that even if you don’t have anything to play for, it’s kind of a little bit easier to play kind of for the love of the game than in some other forms of chess,” Carlsen concluded.