Magnus Carlsen

Carlsen lives in Lommedalen, Bærum, near Norway's capital, Oslo. He played in his first tournament at the age of eight and was coached by Norway's top player, Grandmaster Simen Agdestein. The young International Master was given half a year off from elementary school to be able to participate in international chess tournaments during the fall season of 2003. In that year, he finished third in the European Under-14 Boys Championship.

The result which really brought him to the attention to the international chess world, however, was his victory in the C group at the Corus chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee with 10.5/13, losing just one game (against the tournament's highest rated player, Dusko Pavasovic), taking his first Grandmaster norm, and achieving an Elo tournament performance rating of 2702. Particularly notable was his win in the penultimate round over Spike Ernst in which Carlsen sacrificed material to mate Ernst in just 29 moves. This game won Carlsen the Audience Prize for best game of the round (including all the games played in the B and A groups), though the first 23 moves had already been seen in the game Almagro Llanas-Gustafsson, Madrid 2003 (which, however, was a draw).

Carlsen's tournament victory in the C group qualified him to play in the B group in 2005, and led to Lubomir Kavalek, writing in the Washington Post, to describe him as the "Mozart of chess". According to an interview with mentor Agdestein, himself once the world's youngest GM at 18, Carlsen is a significantly better player than he was himself at the same age.

External links

• Chessbase.com article on Carlsen
• Kavalek's article on Corus 2004, including notes on Carlsen-Ernst

Referenced By