Magnus Carlsen

Magnus Carlsen

Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen (born 30 November 1990) is a Norwegian chess grandmaster. He is the current World Chess Champion, World Rapid Chess Champion and World Blitz Chess Champion. His peak classical rating of 2882 is the highest in history. Carlsen also holds the record for the longest unbeaten run in chess.

About Magnus Carlsen in brief

Summary Magnus CarlsenSven Magnus Øen Carlsen (born 30 November 1990) is a Norwegian chess grandmaster. He is the current World Chess Champion, World Rapid Chess Champion and World Blitz Chess Champion. His peak classical rating of 2882 is the highest in history. Carlsen also holds the record for the longest unbeaten run in chess. His positional mastery and endgame prowess have drawn comparisons to those of former world champions Bobby Fischer, Anatoly Karpov, José Raúl Capablanca, and Vasily Smyslov. He has stated that the middlegame is his favourite part of the game as it “comes down to pure chess” Carlsen was coached at the Norwegian College of Elite Sport by the country’s top player, Grandmaster Simen Agdestein. He was able to recall the areas, population numbers, flags and capitals of all the countries in the world by the age of five. 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. His favourite pastimes included playing football and reading Donald Duck comics until the end of the autumn of 2000, which he studied for about four hours a day. His father, a keen amateur chess player, taught him to play chess at the aged of 5, although he initially showed little interest in the game and played chess by himself for hours on end. His breakthrough occurred in the Norwegian junior championship in September 2000, where Carlsen scored 3½5 against the top junior players of the country, a performance rating of about 2000.

At age 15, he won the Norwegian Chess Championship, and at 17, he finished joint first in the top group of Corus. At 19, he reached number one in the FIDE world rankings aged 19, becoming the youngest person ever to achieve those feats. As a teenager, Carlsen has since developed into a universal player. He uses a variety of openings to make it more difficult for opponents to prepare against him and reduce the effect of computer analysis. In the following year, he retained his title against Viswanathan Anand, and won both the 2014 World Rapid Championship and the World Blitz Championship, thus becoming the first player to hold all three titles simultaneously. He defended his classical world title against Sergey Karjakin in 2016, and against Fabiano Caruana in 2018. In 2019, he repeated his feat by winning the Blitz Championship and Rapid Championship. In 2000, he became a former Norwegian junior champion and International Master as well as a one-year sivjenite and Grandmaster. In 2009, he was awarded the title of International Grandmaster as a result of his work at the University of Tønsberg. He later became a member of the International Chess Federation (ICF) and the Norwegian Football Association (NFO). He is married to Norwegian football manager Egil Drillo Olsen, who was a key inspiration for his coaching strategy. He won the World U12 Chess Championship in 2002.