The retirement of Vladmir Kramnik from classical chess is a novelty to me. He was fairly young when he defeated Garry Kasparov for the World Championship in 2000- 24 or 25 years old. I only began learning chess in 2012 when over age 55 so it’s still all somewhat new to me.
Vlad Kramnik’s style of attack gives the impression of clever use of advancing and promoting pawns; perhaps a forerunner of Magnus Carlsen, yet of course he utilizes a greater range than that.
He doesn’t look to much different now than in 2000. One assumed he would keep his FIDE 2800 rating up and chug along as a good number three or four player another 20 years.
Top level Super GMs apparently require a tremendous amount of time investment in keeping current, after a couple of decades of best 100 in the world and really learning chess long before some players look to pursue other lifestyle directions if they feel they have gone as high qualitatively as they can. With so many interesting spots in Siberia and eastern Russia for outdoor recreation (i.e. fishing, climbing etc.) and the ability to afford to go it is more of a boon for himself than a loss for chess.
Mr. Kramnik has said that he plans to work educating younger players. So his retirement is less than an obituary notice than a change of career direction. At age 40 or 41 his blitz game stands room for improvement and he may take the time to sign up for a Chess.com - Play Chess Online - Free Games account and enter in to tournaments. Blitz chess is attracting a lot of attention from players these days. So many players have never actually played a game of chess with classical time controls. One can play a a few dozen games of blitz in two hours instead of just one classical game.
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