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Magnus Carlsen

Magnus Øen Carlsen (born November 30, 1990) is a Norwegian chess player who came to international attention after winning the C group of the Corus Chess Tournament in January 2004 at the age of thirteen. In the January 2005 FIDE list, he has an Elo rating of 2553, making him Norway's number two. Being a chess prodigy, he has been referred to as "The Mozart of chess".

Carlsen lives in Lommedalen, Bærum, near Norway's capital, Oslo. He played his first tournament at the age of eight and was coached at the Norwegian Sports Gymnasium led by the country's top player, Grandmaster (GM) Simen Agdestein. Agdestein put his civil worker and master player Torbjørn Ringdahl-Hansen, currently a FIDE master with IM and GM norms, as his coach and they had one training session every week, together with one of Magnus' close friends. The young International Master was given a year off from elementary school 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 of 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 highest rated player of the C group, 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 Sipke 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. Carlsen is said to have an excellent memory and plays an unusually wide range of different openings.

Carlsen obtained his second GM norm in the Moscow Aeroflot Open in February 2004. In a blitz chess tournament (where players have much less time for their moves than in normal chess) in Reykjavík, Iceland, on March 17, 2004, Magnus Carlsen defeated former world champion Anatoly Karpov. The blitz tournament was a preliminary event leading up to a rapid chess knock out tournament beginning the next day, where Carlsen achieved one draw against the current top-rated player in the world, Garry Kasparov, before losing to Kasparov after 32 moves of the second game, thus being knocked out of the tournament.

In the 6th Dubai Open Chess Champonship, held April 18 to 28, 2004, Carlsen obtained his third Grandmaster norm (enough for getting the GM title), after getting four wins and four draws before the last game was to be played. Resulting from this he is going to fill the slot as the world's youngest GM and will be the second youngest person ever to hold GM status, after Sergey Karjakin of Ukraine who attained the feat at 12 years and 7 months of age in 2002.

Carlsen was the youngest player to participate in the FIDE World Chess Championship, 2004, but was knocked out in the first round by Levon Aronian . In July of that year, he finished second place behind Berge Østenstad in the Norwegian Chess Championship. Since the scores of these two players were equal (each got 7 points out of 9 but Østenstad had better tiebreaks) a 2-game play-off match between the two was arranged, due to Østenstad's superior tiebreak score he would win the title should this match end with a 1-1 tie. The match did end with a 1-1 tie after two draws, so Østenstad retained his Norwegian championship title.

References

  • Agdestein, S. (2004). Wonderboy. (How Magnus Carlsen became the youngest grandmaster ever). Interchess. ISBN 9056911317.

External links

  • Chessgames.com's site on Carlsen http://www.chessgames.com/player/magnus_carlsen.html , listing his games
  • Lubomir Kavalek's Corus 2004 article including notes on Carlsen-Ernst http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47701-2004Jan25.html (Washington Post, 25 January 2004)
  • Mega Magnus in Wijk aan Zee http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1447 (ChessBase, 27 January 2004)
  • World's youngest grandmaster http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article781461.ece (Aftenposten, 26 April 2004)
  • Magnificent Magnus, the world's youngest grandmaster http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1614 (ChessBase, 30 April 2004). An extensive interview.
  • Carlsen vs. Kasparov http://video.chess.fm/diesen/061904/diesen-06-19-04-Edited.html (Chess.FM) Video with commentary.



Last updated: 01-28-2005 04:29:58
Last updated: 05-01-2005 16:18:47