Written by: Emadeldin Teama

No one can deny that Magnus Carlsen is one of the best chess players of all time. In this article we are going to discuss his life and how he developed over the years to be this ruthless chess machine that he is today!

Carlsen Achievements as a young prodigy

Magnus Carlsen was born in 30 November 1990 in Norway. He is a Norwegian chess grandmaster who is the current World Chess Champion, World Rapid Chess Champion, and World Blitz Chess Champion. Carlsen first reached the top of the FIDE world rankings in 2010, and trails only Garry Kasparov in time spent as the highest rated player in the world. His peak classical rating of 2882 is the highest in history. Carlsen also holds the record for the longest unbeaten run in classical chess.

Carlsen Showed an amazing chess skill from a very young age. He finished first in the C group of the Corus chess tournament shortly after he turned 13, and earned the title of grandmaster a few months later. At age 15, he won the Norwegian Chess Championship, and at 17, he finished joint first in the top group of Corus. He surpassed a rating of 2800 at age 18 and reached number one in the FIDE world rankings aged 19, becoming the youngest person ever to achieve this.

Did Carlsen show signs of intelligence as a young boy?

Yes he did. When Carlsen was only two years old he could solve a lot of puzzles that consist of many pieces. His father noticed that he loves mental challenges and always trying to think about them. He introduced him to chess at the age of 5 years old.the funny part is that he initially showed little interest in the game of chess. He has three sisters, and in 2010 he stated that one of the things that first motivated him to take up chess seriously was the desire to beat his elder sister at the game.

Carlsen developed his early chess skills playing by himself for hours on end—moving the pieces around, searching for combinations, and replaying games and positions shown to him by his father. Simen Agdestein emphasises Carlsen’s exceptional memory, stating that he was able to recall the areas, population numbers, flags and capitals of all the countries in the world by the age of five!

How did Carlsen develop his chess skill over time?

The first chess book Carlsen read was a booklet named Find the Plan by Bent Larsen, and his first book on openings was Eduard Gufeld’s The Complete Dragon. He then got coached at the Norwegian College of Elite Sport by the country’s top player, Grandmaster (GM) Simen Agdestein who in turn cites Norwegian football manager Egil “Drillo” Olsen as a key inspiration for his coaching strategy.

In 2000, Agdestein introduced Carlsen to Ringdal Hansen, a former Norwegian junior champion and later International Master (IM) and Grandmaster (GM), as Ringdal served a one-year siviltjeneste (an alternative civilian service programme) at the college.

Over the course of that year, Carlsen’s rating rose from 904 in June 2000, to 1907. Carlsen’s breakthrough occurred in the Norwegian junior teams championship in September 2000, where Carlsen scored 3½/5 against the top junior players of the country, and a performance rating of about 2000. Apart from chess, which he studied about three to four hours a day.

From autumn 2000 to the end of 2002, Carlsen played almost 300 rated tournament games, as well as several blitz tournaments, and participated in other minor events. In October 2002, he placed sixth in the European Under-12 Championship in Peñiscola. The following month, he tied for first place in the 2002 World Under-12 Championship in Heraklion, placing second to Ian Nepomniachtchi on tiebreak. After this, he obtained three IM norms in relatively quick succession; his first was at the January 2003 Gausdal Troll Masters (score 7/10, 2453 PR), the second was at the June 2003 Salongernas IM-tournament in Stockholm (6/9, 2470 PR), and the third and final IM norm was obtained at the July 2003 Politiken Cup in Copenhagen (8/11, 2503 PR). He was officially awarded the IM title on 20 August 2003.

After finishing primary school, Carlsen took a year off to participate in international chess tournaments held in Europe during the autumn of 2003, returning to complete secondary education at a sports school. During the year away from school, he placed joint-third in the European Under-14 Championship and ninth in the 2003 World Under-14 Championship.

How did Carlsen win his first world champion title ?

In 2013, Carlsen defeated the current world champion at that time Super Grandmaster Vishy Anand. Carlsen kept his title as the current world chess champion for 8 years so far . No one was able to defeat him in any world championship match ever!

His main strength is that he has a universal attacking style since he was a teenager. He uses a variety of openings to make it more difficult for opponents to prepare against him and reduce the utility of pre-game computer analysis. He has stated the middlegame is his favourite part of the game as it “comes down to pure chess”.His positional mastery and endgame prowess have drawn comparisons to former world champions Bobby Fischer, Anatoly Karpov, José Raúl Capablanca, and Vasily Smyslov.

In the next days the world champion match will begin between the legendary Carlsen and the challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi. These two friends were preparing together in 2013 against Vishy anand to achieve the first world champion title for Carlsen. GM Ian was his second and the head of his preparation team. This would give GM Ian a certain psychological advantage at least against Carlsen. He is the only Grandmaster who has a positive score in classical chess against Carlsen. However, I believe that Carlsen would be able to defend his title. If they reach the rapid or blitz games. This would be very hard for Ian because Carlsen is known for being a monster in Rapid and blitz chess. All in all I believe we will see very interesting games in the upcoming days and a huge fight over the title!

Is Carlsen a creative player or just a chess calculating machine?

Many Grandmaster stated that Carlsen main power is his blessing of a great memory and super skill of calculation.However, we would like to show that Carlsen is unbelievably creative player.in short time control he always prefer to go for the creative solution of any position and he would listen to his intuition over anything else. We would like to present a game played very very recently against one of the best players GM Anish giri

Here is the video to the game where Carlsen sacrifice his queen for three pieces getting an unsual position and entering Giri preparation proving that this line is okay for him!!

Here is the video

Absloutely horrific play from Carlsen.Carlsen once stated that his talent comes from the hours he spend playing against himself very unusual positions moving the pieces around . it gave him an edge against everyone later to go for extremely strange positions and end up winning them.as we see in the video.Anish couldn’t find a way to peneterate this position and slowly the tide turned to the point that carlsen was the one controlling the whole fight scene and the white king was the one under fire!

Conclusion

We would like to conclude from Carlsen life story very important concepts. If you want to be a great chess player. You will need natural talent but more important is time and effort. Carlsen took a year off at a very young age to play 300 rated games in a single year all over Europe. He sacrificed time and effort to reach where he was. Don’t forget that carlsen once had a rating of 900.Every one is a genius in his own way. You need to find the thing that you have a natural gift in and then put all your effort in it. Only then you can achieve greatness