Magnus Carlsen likely to have played his last rated Classical match as World Chess Champion

Magnus Carlsen is likely to have played his last rated classical game as World Chess Champion according to chess.com and chessbase.com.
The 32-year-old Carlsen became the World Champion for the first time in 2013, when he beat India’s Viswanathan Anand. Carlsen retained the title against Anand the following year. In 2014, he also made hory becoming the World rapid and World blitz champion, the first player to hold all three titles simultaneously. He repeated the feat in 2019 and 2022.
At the Norwegian Team League in Oslo over the weekend, the world champion played with white pieces and won his first two games against Norwegian players, Grandmaster Jon Ludvig Hammer and Fide Master Levi Andre Tallaksen. He also drew with English Grandmaster David Howell.
These three games could most likely be Carlsen’s last rated Classical Games before the World Championship match between Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi and China’s Ding Liren which will take place between April 7 and May 1 in Astana, Kazakhstan.

After the game, when Carlsen was asked if it was a special day, he replied that he was done with defending his World Championship crown. “Not really. Well, in terms of league, yes, but in terms of world championship, I’ve sort of mentally been finished with that a while ago.I still have two titles,” Carlsen said according to chess.com. The two titles are the World rapid and World blitz titles.
In November FIDE, the governing body for chess, confirmed that Carlsen would not defend his world championship title.
“Grandmaster Ding Liren received this weekend the official invitation to take part in the FIDE World Championship match 2023, after the current World Champion Magnus Carlsen formally confirmed, in writing, that he gives up his right to take part in the match and defend his title,” FIDE had announced.

Carlsen had said in a podcast for his sponsor Unibet that he was not motivated anymore to defend the World Championship title.
“I am not motivated to play another match. I simply feel that I don’t have a lot to gain, I don’t particularly like it, and although I’m sure a match would be interesting for horical reasons and all of that, I don’t have any inclination to play and I will simply not play the match,” Carlsen had said in November.