At just 18, Vincent Keymer is one of the world’s chess elite. At the World Rapid Championship he finished second behind superstar Magnus Carlsen. With ntv.de he talks about hours of training, why his sport is so exhausting and why the world title is not his goal.
“Kudos to Vincent. He played a great tournament and showed great class.” Vincent Keymer deserved the congratulations after the World Rapid Championship. The 18-year-old returned from Almaty in Kazakhstan as Vice World Champion. But these congratulations are actually something special, they come from the dominator Magnus Carlsen. Only the Norwegian was better than Keymer in his fourth World Cup success. The young man from Saulheim near Mainz was half a point short of being able to challenge Carlsen to a playoff for the title.
On the way to the runner-up title, he won against, among others, Fabiano Caruana from the USA, who placed third on equal points, and against the Russian Jan Nepomnjaschtschi, the last two challengers to Carlsen for the classic world title. “The result was so good that I was very, very happy with it,” says Keymer in an interview with ntv.de. “But when you’ve missed an opportunity, you’re never 100 percent satisfied.”
The 18-year-old has the chance to do even better on January 13th. Then one of the big chess tournaments starts in Wijk aan Zee in the Netherlands: Tata Steel Chess. In the 14-man Masters group, five players from the top ten meet the global juniors. Carlsen had already praised on Twitter at the end of November that there was a large selection of young talent. “Only Aronian (Lewon, Armenian chess grandmaster, editor’s note) keeps me from being the oldest player on the field.” At 32, Carlsen seems almost old compared to Keymer, who passed his Abitur in March 2022 with an average of 1.7 and has been a chess professional ever since.
First German championship at the age of six
When he was just five years old, Keymer accidentally discovered a chessboard, he really wanted to have the rules explained, and his passion was awakened. “Back then, curiosity was the driving force and there really wasn’t anything else. Nobody could have guessed that it would develop like this,” he says in retrospect. His parents could teach him the rules, but soon he was better than them. “After a few weeks, after one, maybe two weeks” he had already beaten her, he told ntv.de. “I played my first German championships when I was six,” he says, looking back at the beginning of his career.
Despite his young age, Keymer already has a lot of experience. He therefore knows how to classify his Vice World Champion title – rapid chess is something completely different from classic chess. “I can’t assume that my next tournaments will go as well. But it’s a nice feeling to know that something like this can be achieved.” The fact that he lost to Carlsen both in rapid chess and in the Blitz World Championship that followed does not sadden him greatly. “It actually went very well against the other players and that definitely gives you confidence.”
Respect for Carlsen is great, the Norwegian won both world titles in Almaty, according to Keymer, he still has a lot of work to do to get as close as possible to his playing strength – “and maybe even be able to get even better”. Keymer is already one of the world elite. He is the youngest German grandmaster and has even been a “super grandmaster” since October 2022. He belongs to a small world selection, only 130 players worldwide can adorn themselves with this title, only nine were younger than 18 when they achieved this award, and Keymer is the only German in this elite circle. Since July 2022 he has also been among the top 50 of the world’s best players.
Eight hours of training a day
To do this, he trains with his coach Peter Leko for up to eight hours or even more on some days. The Hungarian is a grandmaster himself and has been training the young German since 2017. But Keymer also knows that resting is also important, because the level of concentration in chess is incredibly high. “Obviously that takes a lot of strength for hours. It’s the same in tournaments, also in tournament games and also in training. At some point you just feel that you can no longer maintain this concentration,” he explains on ntv.de. This becomes clear when he recognizes fewer variations in a game or that he becomes more error-prone. “And then you have to take a break to regain your strength or to train at the same level again.” To regenerate, he goes cycling, walking or jogging, and sleep is also important. In general, chess takes up a large part of his life, but he says clearly: “You mustn’t forget that even if you’re a chess player, you’re still a normal person.”
However, Keymer is someone with a huge talent and ambition – and clear principles. He doesn’t think much of doping or cheating. “It can do a lot of damage to the sport,” he makes clear. “No matter how good the player is, engines (chess programs, editor’s note) are simply much, much stronger than people. Then you don’t stand a chance.” Keymer recently explained to “Zeit” that the possibilities of cheating in chess are still “relatively unknown”: “That’s why there are no real countermeasures yet. It’s time to think about what you could do. That would be a task for associations, tournament organizers, chess platforms and of course the World Chess Federation.”
It’s also about his own future. “First of all, I think it’s good if I can show myself that I’m clean,” he said to “Zeit”. “And I want to protect the sport. I don’t want to imagine that there is a lot of cheating at the level of the top grandmasters.” As an 18-year-old, he has long since arrived at the top of the world. He doesn’t see his young age as a disadvantage. There is no defined perfect age for a chess player: “Magnus Carlsen was number one in the world very, very early on and some players, for example Viswanathan Anand, were still top of the world at 40 or 45 years of age.”
Calculate up to ten moves ahead
Keymer does not want to talk about a possible world title. “It’s an insanely difficult road, even for people who have been in the top three in the world for ten years, it’s a very, very rocky road.” He emphasizes: “It’s a dream, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that’s the goal.”
Above all, it is important that he trains a lot in the near future. “Since I also went to school, I lost a lot of training time.” It is therefore more realistic for him to get into the top ten. According to the world association FIDE, his Elo rating is 2700 points, which he would like to increase to 2750. “But nobody is guaranteed anything,” he emphasizes calmly. In general, he sometimes has the feeling that the Elo number “does not necessarily reflect what you have achieved”. When he was younger he often had the feeling that he was getting better, but that the Elo rating had not changed or was even falling. “And then at some point the jump will come again.”
It is the thinking ahead that makes playing chess so complicated for laypeople. “If it’s a very tactical position, it may well be that you have to calculate seven, eight, maybe even ten moves ahead to understand which variants work and which don’t.” His goal for this year is therefore easy to explain: “Just play nice tournaments, play well, learn a lot, take a lot of experience with you.”