How bad is Carlsen at 960?

I've been following the past two editions of the Speed Chess Championship, and it seems to me that Carlsen has lost more than half of his 960 games in the tournament - maybe a lot more than half. Of the remaining ones he's drawn a few, so overall he must have a huge negative score in 960 games in the tournament. In yesterday's final against Nakamura, despite winning by a lopsided 18-9 margin, he was crushed in the three 960 games, scoring just 0.5-2.5. As I am not a big 960 player myself, I cannot comment on the quality of his play - but for those who are more familiar with the variant, just how bad is Carlsen at it? Would just about every other top 10 player crush him? Maybe even most other 2700+ players, and some 2600+ guys as well (I think he also lost the 960 mini-match to Tigran Petrosian)? And if one day the variant were to become more popular, and FIDE were to host regular 960 tournaments, would Carlsen throw a hissy fit and leave FIDE to form his own 960-free chess organization?

They'll play a 960 match in the following weeks, OTB.

Oh boy... looks like Carlsen is still young and reckless! You know what - good for him! Even if he's out of his depth, he might learn a thing or two. It's good to challenge ourselves every now and then, is it not?

"if one day the variant were to become more popular, and FIDE were to host regular 960 tournaments, would Carlsen throw a hissy fit and leave FIDE"

Probably, if regular 960 tournament existed Carlsen might quit chess and enter the Worldwide Church of God...

A post on Carlsen's Chess960 results from May:

"Magnus has played Chess960 very rarely in official competitions. In the recent Chess.com Grandmaster Blitz Battle, that he won, each knockout match featured three Chess960 games. In these matches he scored:

• 2/3 vs. Tigran Petrosian
• 2/3 vs. Alexander Grischuk
• 0.5/3 vs. Hikaru Nakamura

I think this very limited dataset is not enough to say much about his Chess960 skills, but it’s interesting that he lost so badly to Nakamura, who is known to be a fan of this variant of chess, despite Magnus winning their match 14.5–10.5"

https://www.quora.com/What-does-Magnus-Carlsen-think-of-Fischer-Random-Chess-Chess960-How-well-does-he-play-it

If hes rated 960 he should be banned for obvious sandbagging.

I think what is more interesting is why does Naka excel in this Chess960 while Carlsen does not? They both have different styles of play. Naka seems more tricky and tactical than Carlsen, but Carlsen is stronger in terms of strategy while being very strong tactically as well. So maybe Carlsen has trouble coping with the different starting positions of Chess960 because they have no pattern that he can recognize (at first) .

Naka doesn't have the same issues, because that is his style of play, and I've noticed one reason why Naka is so good at speed chess is because he can unleash tricks very fast in many positions, even in the endgame with only a few seconds on the clock.

Carlsen maybe is drawing from his immense pattern recognition memory "database". It's rumored that Carlsen knows thousands or tens of thousands of games by heart. He seems to have defeated Naka (and many others) many times from his strong positional understanding, even from the early middlegame onwards.

Or maybe he just had one of those days when you play 2000 points lower than your skill level. It happens to all of us.

I didn't know Carlsen scored only 0.5 against Nakamura in chess960. This is actually very interesting. What does this mean? Naka has more intuition? Carlsen is better at theory? We need more data. It would be interesting to see.

Has anyone ever heard of "Capablanca Chess"?  Capablanca invented it because he thought standard chess would be played out in a few decades.  It included two new pieces: the archbiship with the powers of bishop and knight and the chancellor with the powers of rook and knight.  I had also read once that Capablanca suggested exchanging the home squares of bishops and knights in order to breathe some life into the game.  It's not really surprising when you consider that during the period he was champion and a title contender, the QGD dominated among the games of top masters.  I believe almost every game of his 34 game title match against Alekhine was a QGD.  It's also not surprising when you consider that Capablanca had great natural talent.  I think he was more inclined to trust his intuition than to spend many hours studying openings.  I believe Capablanca would be very much in favor of 960 because it removes "book" from the game.  That would give the player with the greater natural talent a distinct advantage.

Some have suggested that Carlsen's main advantage over his contemporaries is memorization.  I don't know if that's true but if he is relatively weak at 960, that could be the reason.  Obviously memorization - at least in the opening - is not going to give a player an advantage in 960. 

He is strong, just relatively weak when compared with other GMs who ALSO do not play Chess960. Like Grischuk for example.....who beat him in the bullet and 960 just recently. I don't know if Chess960 can be "studied" or not because the starting positions are always random.

But Grischuk and Naka both have a tricky and tactical style as well, if you notice. Maybe that helps them to adapt to Chess960 without much issue.

Carlson has a near Eidetic memory where he can memorize thousands of games and positions that us "normal" players can not.....i.e. a chess database in his brain. He can use that as a crutch and doesn't have to reason out as many positions. With 960 there are so many positions that it becomes impossible to memorize them, so he has to reason out almost all positions. This is a totally different skill set, and although he would still cream most all of us, against top rated GM's this can be a problem.

”These guys can barely think for themselves when they're out of computer preparations. Magnus especially. He is good at memorization, nothing more”

”Some have suggested that Carlsen's main advantage over his contemporaries is memorization”

”Carlson has a near Eidetic memory where he can memorize thousands of games and positions —- With 960 there are so many positions that it becomes impossible to memorize them —- against top rated GM's this can be a problem”

I have no idea where this thing about Carlsen relying on memorization of games while other top players supposedly rely on understanding etc comes from :-) My impression is rather that Carlsen depends much less on opening prep and memorization than most other top players. He has a very good intuition and understanding of strategy, which works even better in speed chess. But for some reason many want it not to be like that :-) As for Chess960, I think he will win comfortably in a match, it’s a bit different with single games here and there, which get overinterpreted. One of the losses against Naka came after a mistake in a better position, that was well into the game, where nothing was left of the Chess960-ness of it. 

Not that bad...

Carlsen is so bad at 960 that he became world champion. 

he just won the 960 match against naka

^^^Now what, stupid?!?  MAGA!! (= MAGnus is Awesomer At All Alternative forms of chess).