Norwegian teenager to be crowned new chess king
Wed Dec 30, 2009 11:25am GMT
By Wojciech Moskwa
OSLO (Reuters Life!) – The chess world’s new number one 19-year-old Magnus Carlsen plots 20 moves ahead and can remember matches he played six years ago move-for-move, but insists he is still pretty much your average teenager.
The brightest talent in a generation according to his Russian coach and chess great Garry Kasparov, Norway’s Carlsen will officially become the world’s youngest ever top ranked player when new rankings come out at the start of 2010.
Dubbed the “Mozart of chess,” Carlsen plays with a healthy dose of natural intuition on top of deep analysis and pursues other interests that he believes help his game.
He brushes aside comparisons with the world’s troubled chess geniuses such as Bobby Fisher, a prodigy and champion who became engulfed by chess and detached from the rest of the world.
“Bobby Fischer was obviously one of the greatest chess players of all time — one of the inventors,” Carlsen told Reuters in an interview.
“The difference between him and me, for example, is that he was obsessed with chess in a way that is not healthy and that’s a line I don’t intend to cross.”
“I try not to mix chess with life. When I don’t play I more or less do normal things for a teenager,” said Carlsen, who this year graduated from high school and become a household name in Norway, winning a number of person of the year honors.
Carlsen started playing chess as an 8-year-old mainly to beat his older sister, which he says took him “a few weeks.”
Within a year he regularly beat his father, who plays club-level chess in Norway, and at age 13 he had a shock win in a speed chess competition against world champion Anatoly Karpov and a draw against Kasparov.
Carlsen believes his fluid style is well suited to speed or blitz chess, shorter versions of the game played with a clock giving each player only a few minutes to complete their moves, rather than deliberating at length over a single movement.
Asked about a tournament match he played, as a 12-year-old, against a club player and Reuters correspondent Oskar von Bahr, Carlsen said he could probably replay that match move-for-move and admitted that at one point he was in trouble.
Here is the full article.
He’s king of country in which after a new event someone else is crowned king, but yes, it looks like he’s the main contender to become just that unchallenged king like Kasparow.
okay from germany
Being no.1 in ratings does not necessarily mean you’re the king of chess. The world champion still has the right to be called king. To be world champion, you have to get thru the process and handle all the pressures of a championship match. Until Carlsen does that, he will simply be no.1 rated. Safina and Jankovic both became no.1 in women’s tennis, but neither has won any major championship, and no knowledgeable tennis fan ever called either the queen of tennis. Serena Williams deserves that better.
The internet age has sapped people’s attention span. The World Championship title only gets awarded every two or three years, the #1 rating spot can change as much as daily, with Live Ratings. If people are going to keep talking as though the rating list were the title, they might as well abolish the title altogether.
Yeah Susan im with anon ! Wheres that Sereana Williams , you dont know here huh? Well maybe ya do ,ya seem to know errbody, well tell her some crazy black dude says ” Its Black to play and mate on move!!! hehehe.
Perhaps a more flattering picture would be kind. Lip scabs? Who picked this photo?
What is on Maggies lips? Hopefully chocolate crumbs and not herpes.
Congratulations to Magnus Carlsen becoming No:1 . Let’s not forget,had Topalov not played in the last Olympiad (defending his own country,while most of the Top players backed off)where he did some draws and lost many points,Carlsen would have still been No:2
I am Bulgarian 😉
Congratulations to all Norske Folk 😉
Skol!!!
What’s next? A picture of Anand with pillow hair and eye crust? C’mon this is a great site, you can do better.
“A picture of Anand with pillow hair and eye crust?”
Nope, just a limp toupee and externally worn underwear with caked on curry flavored butt-crust.