Fabiano Caruana is a chess champion all but made for the age of social media.
In August, on the eve of the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, the most competitive chess tournament ever played on American soil, he took the Ice Bucket Challenge. Sitting at a chess table, playing white, he moved out his pawn and was promptly doused from above, the icy water drenching his T-shirt. Videos were posted to YouTube and collected 30,000 views.
He went on to win seven straight matches against the best players in the world, a nearly impossible feat that some chess historians equated with Bobby Fischer’s 20-game streak in the early 1970s.
The Miami-born, Brooklyn-raised Mr. Caruana became an overnight sensation online. Fivethirtyeight.com weighed in on the tournament with a post stating that he was “doing the impossible.” Fans congratulated him, with one joking that he should refer to his opponents as “punchbags.”
Mr. Caruana, typically understated, sent out a single tweet to his followers, his first since posting the Ice Bucket Challenge video: “Just completed the best performance (so far!) of my career. 8.5/10 and clear 1st place in the highest rated chess tournament ever! #SinqCup.”
As Mr. Caruana, 22, continues to move through the highest reaches of competitive chess (Sunday he finishes up in the four-day, six-player London Chess Classic), he has begun to embrace the role that social media can play in heightening his profile both in the sport and beyond. It’s not exactly by accident.
“These days, because of social media, chess doesn’t just happen at a table,” said Eric Kuhn, a friend of Mr. Caruana’s who was formerly the head of social media at United Talent Agency, and who has been informally advising Mr. Caruana on his social media presence.
It’s been some time since chess was considered central to America’s sense of itself; the 1972 Match of the Century, when Mr. Fischer defeated Boris Spassky, thrust chess forward as a Cold War metaphor, and chess stars in those days had a national celebrity. In the years since, chess has flourished in schools and clubs, according to the United States Chess Federation, which says it is witnessing robust participation in the sport among both boys and girls. Yet interest has languished at the highest levels. The byzantine world of competitive chess makes it a tough sell as a spectator sport, and champions are perceived as esoteric talents without much relevance in the real world.
But that may be changing, at least partly because of Magnus Carlsen. The 23-year-old Norwegian, the reigning world champion, is blond and square-jawed; from certain angles, it’s as if you’re looking at Matt Damon. He has modeled for a clothing label, G-Star, in print ads (shot by Anton Corbijn, co-starring Liv Tyler) and television commercials (co-starring Lily Cole). And he has been aggressive about embracing new technologies. Mr. Carlsen has 85,000 Twitter followers and recently released an app, Play Magnus, that lets fans challenge simulations of him at different ages, from 5 to 23.
And, now, in Mr. Caruana, he has the kind of foil that chess fans think could make their sport electric again. Mr. Caruana is young, like Mr. Carlsen. He is immensely talented. He projects a certain image — bookish rather than fashionable, though his adherents say that doesn’t pose a problem.
“The nerd is the new celebrity,” Mr. Kuhn said. “Think of the rise of Benedict Cumberbatch and the Jack Dorseys of the world. Smart is the new handsome.”
The time is right for Mr. Caruana from a historical standpoint as well. “America seems to produce an absolute master every 50 years or so,” said Kenneth Rogoff, 61, a Harvard economics professor and grandmaster who competed in national championships when he was younger. “You had Paul Morphy in the mid-19 century, Harry Nelson Pillsbury in the late 19th, and then Fischer, of course. Fabiano is clearly the best American player since Fischer.”
And yet, Professor Rogoff is speaking wishfully. Mr. Caruana isn’t an American player, and hasn’t been for a decade. He plays for Italy, where he has dual citizenship. But American chess fans are willing to overlook that stubborn fact, if only tentatively for now, and imagine him as a national hero, an ascendant star in an ancient game that is having trouble finding its footing in the contemporary world.
Mr. Caruana’s chess odyssey began in Brooklyn in the late ’90s, when his parents put him in an after-school program at Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope. Carol Ann Caronia, a Brooklyn chess educator, was his first teacher. “You could spot his talent immediately,” she said. “He was winning, first of all. And he had an incredible ability to concentrate.”
“I remember my first tournament,” Mr. Caruana said. “I knew the rules but I couldn’t figure out how to press the clock. It wasn’t a big success the first time.”
As Mr. Caruana became more devoted to the game, he worked with Ms. Caronia and Bruce Pandolfini, the famed chess coach and author, in an attempt to find the limit of his talent.
They didn’t find it.
The royal game wasn’t long for Kings County. In 2004, when Mr. Caruana was 12, his family moved to Europe; the following year, he joined the Italian Chess Federation. “It made sense to change federations,” said Fabiano’s father, Louis Caruana. “He would qualify for additional tournaments and get to the top more quickly. That would give him a psychological boost.” The strategy worked. Mr. Caruana became the Italian champion in 2007.
On the surface, a rivalry between Mr. Caruana and Mr. Carlsen, the Norwegian, seems to set up perfectly. They have opposed styles: Mr. Caruana is affable and approachable, while Mr. Carlsen affects a certain coolness (a representative said he was preparing for a tournament and would answer questions for this article only via email). It makes sense on the board, too. Mr. Caruana has a reputation for establishing himself early in a game; the chess writer Leonard Barden has referred to his openings as “Caruana bombs.” Mr. Carlsen is renowned for his end game, his ability to extract victories from situations that look like certain draws. And while Mr. Carlsen employs a highly complex positional style, Mr. Caruana is a master of simplicity.
Professor Rogoff called his game “Shakespearean,” explaining that Mr. Caruana is harnessing ideas that are available to any player and elevating them to a level surpassing poetry. “He does things that any player can understand, but does them so much better,” Professor Rogoff said. “In that, he’s like Fischer.”
Mr. Caruana’s former teacher agrees. “It’s one of the reasons I use Fischer’s games to teach my students,” Ms. Caronia said. “They’re very straightforward in some ways. I can imagine using Fab’s games in that same way.”
With chess thriving in the classroom but failing to capture the attention of the American public on the professional level, do the players themselves think a sustained Carlsen-Caruana rivalry would help?
“I think it would, yes,” Mr. Caruana said, though he declines to talk anything approaching trash. Chess players, like chessboards, are squares. “He’s quite likable,” Mr. Caruana said of Mr. Carlsen.
Mr. Carlsen returns the favor, more in the fashion of one man holding the door for another than of two Nascar drivers swapping paint. “Caruana has had a great development lately, especially on the ratings,” Mr. Carlsen said. “He has established himself as the world No. 2 now. He represents an exciting group of new, promising players.”
Eventually, a bit of competitive steel pokes through. “He’s used to his unchallenged status as the world’s No. 1,” Mr. Caruana added. “I also think he enjoys when people are unconfident against him. And I don’t think I show that at all. I respect him greatly as a player but I’m still not afraid. I don’t think he likes that.”
After St. Louis, Mr. Caruana started the Baku Grand Prix with a pair of victories that brought him within 10 ratings points of Mr. Carlsen. Subsequent tournaments have opened Mr. Carlsen’s lead back up to 30 points. But Mr. Caruana is closing the social-media gap. He is tweeting more. He has joined Instagram.
And he has his informal team of boosters, including the former agent Mr. Kuhn, to help him maximize the power of new technologies. “For the first time, with Fab and Magnus, we have a potential rivalry between two phenomenal players who are of this generation, who are digital natives,” Mr. Kuhn said.
Some chess observers feel that while social media can help to increase Mr. Caruana’s visibility, the prospect of a rivalry depends on whether or not Mr. Caruana returns to play for America. “I think chess needs that, in the sense that chess needs America,” Professor Rogoff said. “It would certainly help professional chess if it became more visible in the States, if there were clearly defined personalities.”
Mr. Caruana says that talk of a return is premature. “St. Louis was the first time I had played in the United States in a number of years,” he said. “Naturally, lots of people were interested in me returning to play for the U.S. But right now, nothing is happening. I don’t have any immediate plans.”
The governing body of American chess is circumspect. “We have an obligation to think about that upper level, of course,” said Jean Hoffman, the executive director of the United States Chess Federation. “That’s an incredibly important part of our organization. But we have other things to think about as well — other age levels, other competitive levels. As the national federation for the sport, we have a range of stakeholders and people that we are responsible for serving.”
Maybe the place to end is back at square one: in Park Slope, where Mr. Caruana first picked up a chess piece.
“I think Fabiano has the ability to bring back interest in chess at the highest level,” said Ms. Caronia, his former teacher. “I would hope that he would come back.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/14/fashion/young-grandmasters-try-to-make-chess-cool.html?_r=0
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