 "Russian Grandmaster Daniil Dubov was part of Magnus Carlsen's team during the 2018 and 2021 FIDE World Championship matches against Fabiano Caruana and Ian Nepomniachtchi. Image credit: Norway Chess/Reuters")
Magnus Carlsen has been the most dominant player since he rose to the top of the FIDE ratings for the first time in 2010, having occupied the top spot continuously since July 2011. The Norwegian Grandmaster also happens to be a five-time world champion, winning the most prestigious game of chess for the first time in 2013 against Viswanathan Anand and successfully defending his title in the next four editions until he voluntarily opted out in 2022.
How Carlsen tests his ideas against ‘certified idiots’ in his team
It’s not just sheer genius that Carlsen relies on to get the better of his opponents; the 34-year-old has a unique method of preparing for crucial showdowns. According to Russian Grandmaster Daniil Dubov, who was part of Team Carlsen for two of his five World Championship victories, Carlsen had something of an “Idiot Test” which he would use to determine whether an opening was worth playing or not.
“Magnus always had that method to try out ideas which we called the ‘Idiot Test’. The ‘Idiot Test’ is that if you have found an (opening) idea, you have to play it against an unprepared Laurent Fressinet (French Grandmaster) and beat him. If you don’t win, the idea is refuted,” Dubov told Russian podcaster Ilya Levitov.
“(If you don’t win with that idea) The idea doesn’t work! I can tell you that it’s a 90 per cent-reliable piece of statistic! That’s how it is,” he added.
Dubov, who was part of Carlsen’s team for his world championship battles against Fabiano Caruana and Ian Nepomniachtchi in 2018 and 2021 respectively, added that before Fressinet, it was Carlsen’s compatriot Jon Ludvig Hammer who was the “certified idiot” against whom he would test his ideas.
“Earlier, the certified idiot would be Jon Ludvig Hammer, but when I joined the team Hammer was no longer there, so this was Fress (Fressinet). But thank God I played much better than Fress, so the majority of the ideas passed the test, regardless of their quality,” Dubov added.
Carlsen had opted against defending his World Championship title in 2022, allowing China’s Ding Liren to take his place against Candidates champion Nepomniachtchi. Liren would go on to defeat the Russian GM, only to surrender his title to India’s D Gukesh the following year.
Besides his declining interest in the Classical format, which has also resulted in a series of hostile verbal exchanges with FIDE, Carlsen has been busy championing the Freestyle format, having co-founded the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour with German entrepreneur Jan Henric-Buettner.