Magnus Carlsen
Biography (1990)
The youngest player to surpass a 2800 rating mark, Magnus Carlsen from Norway stormed into the chess elite in his teens. Carlsen withdrew from the Candidates 2010, dissatisfied with the format, but three years later, he won the Candidates Tournament (London, 2013) thanks to better tiebreaks over Vladimir Kramnik and became the challenger. The same year he convincingly defeated Viswanathan Anand in the title match by a score of 6½–3½ and became the World Champion. During his reign, Magnus defended the title by beating Anand again 6½–4½ (Sochi, 2014) and prevailing in tiebreaks over Sergey Karjakin (New York, 2016) and Fabiano Caruana (London, 2018). In 2021 Carlsen beat Ian Nepomniachtchi in Dubai 7½–3½ and, shortly after the match, announced that he would not defend his title, later confirming it with the official withdrawal. The almost 10-year reign of Magnus Carlsen has ended.
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On Carlsen
Peter Heine Nielsen
Having grown up as part of the “internet generation”, Magnus has gotten an enormous amount of experience by playing thousands of games at fast time controls online, yet has also made a careful study of the classics, often referring to them
Garry Kasparov
The reason Magnus is on top and seems unbeatable today. Magnus is a lethal combination of Fischer and Karpov. He gets his positions and then never lets go of that bulldog bite. Exhausting for opponents
Vladimir Kramnik
Everyone compares him to Mozart, we even sometimes jokingly call him that among ourselves. This is already a kind of cliché, although Magnus’s chess does not at all resemble the Austrian’s music. He is definitely the main figure by far in the modern chess... He has very good chance of being considered as the best chess player in the history. He is an absolutely unique player. It's true, and I am not just trying to give compliment...
Vishy Anand
Normally you should be a little bit sick of chess on his schedule, but he’s still motivated, he comes up with one good result after another. It’s impressive, and I attribute most of it to his fitness and his willingness to play every game till the end. Even positions that are so dead, he somehow sits there and he’s plodding along. He’s not lost this, and even in his worst form these two qualities will keep him in any match. But it’s really impressive what he has done
Ding Liren
He’s been like a role-model to me so to see him seemingly adopt an attitude of retreat had a dampening influence on my own ambition to aim higher
Want more?
Read
Agdestein Simen. How Magnus Carlsen Became the Youngest Chess Grandmaster: The Story and the Games
2013
Kotronias V., Logothetis S. Carlsen's Assault on the Throne
2013
Lakdawala Cyrus. Carlsen: Move by Move
2014
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