A different type of Champion

First Western-Born Chess Champ Since Fischer
Norway’s Magnus Carlsen, 22, crowned World Chess Champion today
By Jonathan Zalman|November 25, 2013 12:07 PM

As is tradition, the new World Chess Champion, Magnus Carlsen, was presented with a laurel wreath today during the closing ceremonies of the 2013 FIDE World Chess Championships in Chennai, India. The laurel wreath—the chess world’s version of a crown—will be placed over Carlsen’s neck and shoulders, framing the deserving smile of the 22-year-old Norwegian, now the second-youngest world chess champion in history.

Carlsen clinched the title on Friday, Nov. 22, by drawing with Viswanathan Anand, the four-time defending champion, in the 10th and deciding game. (Carlsen won by a count of 6.5-3.5 in the best-of-12 match). The match included several signature performances from Carlsen, who favors long, pressing games—versus Anand some lasted six-plus hours—that force his opponents into uncomfortable positions on the chessboard wherein they’re bound to make mistakes. And when Anand made them, Carlsen pounced.

Carlsen entered the match as the top-rated chess player in the world, an echelon he’s been perched atop almost solely since 2010. Because of this, the Norwegian was considered the slight favorite despite the fact that Anand had been the undisputed world titleholder since 2007, and would be playing at home in Chennai. Anand, a national icon, is India’s first grandmaster and world chess champion. In the end, however, he proved to have no answer to Carlsen’s tricky, perhaps weakness-free game.

Carlsen’s wreath (read: crown) symbolizes not only his seat at the international chess throne, but a responsibility to continue to push the ancient game of chess into mass popularity once again. This win will surely place Carlsen’s youthful face across a wider array of homepages, front covers and trending topics worldwide; he’s already a model for clothing brand G-Star Raw, and has been featured on 60 Minutes and The Colbert Report, to name a few. In other words, welcome to the era of King Carlsen. Get comfortable.

The last time chess took the world by storm—feel free to read that again—was in 1972, when American Bobby Fischer beat Boris Spassky of the former Soviet Union to international fervor during the Cold War. Outside of Norway, however, Carlsen’s cult of personality has not reached the level of Bobby Fischer’s—yet.

Like Fischer, Carlsen is a virtuosic animal on the chessboard, and an avid athlete off of it. Carlsen enjoys playing basketball and soccer, and as a youth even enjoyed ski jumping. Fischer, too, believed that staying in shape was key to his chess performance, so he swam and played tennis:

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