Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen is a Norwegian chess grandmaster with a peak rating of 2882, the highest in history.

He had an attacking style as a teenager, but later developed into a more universal player. He doesn’t put much of his focus on opening preparation and plays a variety of openings. This way it is harder for his opponents to prepare against him. His positional mastery and andgame prowess have drawn comparisons to those of former world champions José Raúl Capablanca, Vasily Smyslov, and Anatoly Karpov.

Carlsen was born in Tønsberg, Norway, on 30 November 1990, to Sigrun Øen and Henrik Albert Carlsen, both engineers.

At 2 years Carlsen could solve 50-piece jigsaw puzzles and at the age of 4 he assembled Lego sets with instructions intended for children aged 10-14. His father taught him to play chess at the age of 5, but he showed little intrest in the game.

The first chess book he read was Find the Plan by Bent Larsen. He developed his early chess skills by playing alone for hours—moving the pieces around the chessboard, searching for combinations and replaying games and positions shown to him by his father. His first tournament was at the age of 8 years and 7 months.

Carlsen was coached by Grandmaster Simen Agdestein at the Norwegian College of Elite Sport. He was introduced to International Master Torbjørn Ringdal Hansen and started weekly training sessions with him.

Carlsen studied about 3 to 4 hours a day. His favourite pastimes included football, skiing and reading Donald Duck comics.

After finishing primary school, Carlsen took a year off to participate in international chess tournaments held in Europe during the fall season of 2003. That same year, he finished in a tie for third in the European Under-14 Boys Championship.

World Chess Championship 2013

Carlsen faced Anand in the World Chess Championship 2013 in Chennai, India, from 9 to 22 November. Carlsen won the match 6½–3½ by winning games five, six and nine and drawing the remainder. Thus, Carlsen became the new world chess champion.

Results

Carlsen vs Anand {draw}
Anand vs Carlsen {draw}
Carlsen vs Anand {draw}
Anand vs Carlsen {draw}
Carlsen vs Anand {1-0}
Anand vs Carlsen {0-1}
Anand vs Carlsen {draw}
Carlsen vs Anand {draw}
Anand vs Carlsen {0-1}
Carlsen vs Anand {draw}

World Chess Championship 2014

Carlsen will face Anand in a match for the title of World Chess Champion in November 2014, as Anand qualified by winning the 2014 Candidates Tournament. The rematch will be from November 7 to 28 in Sochi, Russia.

Honours

1. Chess Oscars 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012

2. The Norweigian tabloid Verdens Gang awarded him “NAME OF THE YEAR” twice in 2009 and 2013

3. “Sportsman of the year” in 2009

4. The Folkets Idrettspris, a people’s choice award from the newspaper Dagbladet (2009 and 1012)

5. Peer Gynt Prize in 2011

6. In 2013, Time magazine named Carlsen one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Playing style

As a youth, Carlsen had an aggressive style of play, and, according to Agdestein, his play was characterised by "a fearless readiness to offer material for activity". As he matured, Carlsen found that this risky playing style was not as well suited against the world elite. When he started playing in top tournaments, he was struggling against top players, and had trouble getting much out of the opening. To progress, Carlsen's style became more universal, capable of handling all sorts of positions well. In the opening, Carlsen starts with both 1.d4 and 1.e4, as well as 1.c4 and 1.Nf3 on occasion, thus making it harder for opponents to prepare against him. Evgeny Sveshnikov has criticised Carlsen's opening play, claiming in a 2013 interview that without a more "scientific" approach to preparation, his "future doesn't look so promising".

Carlsen has been known to say that he isn't all that interested in opening preparation; his main forte is the middlegame, in which he manages to outplay many of his opponents with positional means. Carlsen's repertoire is aimed at avoiding an early crisis in the game. He invariably aims for middlegames that lend themselves to a strategic approach.

Jan Timman, 2012

Garry Kasparov, who coached Carlsen from 2009 to 2010, said that Carlsen has a positional style similar to that of past world champions such as Anatoly Karpov, José Raúl Capablanca and Vasily Smyslov, rather than the tactical style of Alexander Alekhine, Mikhail Tal and himself. According to Carlsen, however, he does not have any preferences in terms of playing style. In 2013, Kasparov said that "Carlsen is a combination of Karpov and Fischer. He gets his positions and then never lets go of that bulldog bite. Exhausting for opponents." Anand has said of Carlsen: "The majority of ideas occur to him absolutely naturally. He's also very flexible, he knows all the structures and he can play almost any position. Magnus can literally do almost everything." Kasparov expressed similar sentiments: "Carlsen has theability to correctly evaluate any position, which only Karpov could boast of before him." In a 2012 interview, Vladimir Kramnik attributed much of Carlsen's success against other top players to his "excellent physical shape" and his ability to avoid "psychological lapses", which enables him to maintain a high standard of play over long games and at the end of tournaments, when the energy levels of others have dropped.

Carlsen's endgame prowess has been described as among the greatest in history. Jon Speelman, analysing several of Carlsen's endgames from the 2012 London Classic (in particular, his wins against McShane, Aronian, and Adams), described what he calls the "Carlsen effect". Through the combined force of his skill and no less important his reputation, he drives his opponents into errors. He plays on forever, calmly, methodically and, perhaps most importantly of all, without fear: calculating superbly, with very few outright mistakes and a good proportion of the "very best" moves. This makes him a monster and makes many opponents wilt.

Carlsen's Coolness Chess Group

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