The Story of Magnus Carlsen; The Rebel King of Chess

An unbelievable prodigy. Magnus had shown clear inclination and ability to certain concentrated activities that I thought would match well with chess, basically. A grandmaster at 13. Is this an indication of genius? Of genius and raw talent. A five-time world champion with a decade-long reign. Congratulations to Magnus for retaining the title. This has been a very, very dramatic game. Magnus Carlsen made chess history. And when chess changed, he changed with it. Sorry, dude. I'm not that slow, nor that weak. But the king of chess didn't just change the game forever. He also brought the dark side of chess into the light for everyone to see. Finally, I decided in 2021 that this is probably going to be my last. Magnus Carlsen has never withdrawn from a tournament. He wouldn't put his reputation on the line, would he? And the chess world is shaken to its core because nobody knows what's going on now. The game started, and Magnus has logged off. What has happened? Magnus has resigned. Magnus Carlsen was born in 1990 in Tønsberg, Norway, to parents Sigrun and Henrik. Even before he began to attend school, though, his parents and sisters could see that he was different from other children. You know, he loved reading about the commune flags and knowing the area of all the communes and the number of inhabitants. And he would make me quiz him. As a child, Magnus showed incredible ability to absorb and retain information. But he also appreciated seeing how those things fit together. My father had tried teaching me chess a couple of years before, but I wasn't too interested. I learned the rules, but nothing much more. Yeah, I first wanted to beat my sister. Then I started to get really interested. From there on, I just played because I loved playing. His enthusiasm, kindled by sibling rivalry, Magnus attended his first tournament at 8 years and 7 months old. But over the course of the year 2000, and with the help of his coach, Grandmaster Simon Agadestein, 10-year-old Magnus proved that he was already better than opponents several years older than him. He was 9 years old. He played in a tournament in Norway with one of my students. He was a rook up against one of my students, and the other students were laughing because that guy was a rook down against this very little boy. In 2004, Carlsen shockingly defeated former world champion Anatoly Karpov in blitz chess in Reykjavik, before he found himself face-to-face with another chess legend, Garry Kasparov, then ranked number one in the world. In a sign of things to come, a young Carlsen drew game one against Kasparov. It's a sensation. Magnus managed to draw against Kasparov. Kasparov couldn't beat Magnus. You would think, wow, Kasparov couldn't beat Magnus, what? But that's not really the case, because it was a knockout rapid event. That was just the first game. And here on move 40, uh, move 32, Magnus Carlsen resigned, therefore being eliminated from this tournament in Reykjavik. Garry Kasparov also went on to win this tournament, and he had to get through Magnus Carlsen, which potentially is the most impressive. It was quite a tough match, and I changed the move order in the opening, and I got totally lost position. And then I just managed to survive by miracle. I think he got nervous because he saw he was winning, and then he just missed his chance. But Magnus' true breakout moments were the wins that earned him his Grandmaster title. First, at the Chorus Chess Tournament held at Vykhonskoye, he won his group, performing at a rating of 2702. At the Aeroflot Open in Moscow, Carlsen defeated Russian GM Sergei Dolmatov. And one month later at the Dubai Open, Carlsen put up another incredible result with a performance rating of 2678. At 13 years, 3 months, 27 days, Magnus Carlsen became the second-youngest Grandmaster in chess history. An achievement of this scale brought increasing attention to Magnus, and observers outside the chess world were starting to see what the experts inside it had been saying. Magnus wasn't an ordinary chess prodigy. We've got to interview him, and he's the one to watch. If he ends up world champion or whatever, everyone's going to want to know about his character and his development and what makes him tick. Because chess champions do tend to be very extraordinary people. And the world at large got a taste of Carlsen's incredible skill through exhibitions of simultaneous games and mainstream media interviews. Magnus was more than a good chess player. He was a celebrity. At that point, it was clear. Magnus Carlsen was going to be the future of chess. The question was, what exactly that future would be? In the years after achieving Grandmaster, Magnus continued to play both Norwegian national tournaments and various other international events. But chess itself was changing. The World Championship had formerly been split between FIDE and the Professional Chess Association, but in 2006, that schism was ending. To complete this change, the 2006 championship was played between the 2005 champions of both organizations. The format also moved to more standard time controls. On the player side, access to computerized chess and increasingly sophisticated chess engines was shifting how players learned, practiced, and prepared for competitive chess. Magnus was no exception. He eventually began attending Norway's National Sporting School, and in 2009, it was revealed that he was training with Kasparov. But he also told publications like Time that he was a fan of computer chess, and he practiced chess without a board, something he continued to do in the future. This board was bought at the local billiards shop because I realized at some point that I didn't actually have a chess board. Carlsen's ability was clear when, in 2007, he qualified for the Candidates Tournament But from here, a years-long period of instability in the event's format would lead to public criticism from some pros and a surprising result. Even as he won the World Blitz Chess Championship in 2009 and began defeating greater and greater opponents, even as he earned the World No. 1 FIDE rating in early 2010, the youngest ever to do so, it became clear that Magnus Carlsen's growing dissatisfaction with FIDE's approach could mean that he wouldn't attend a Classical World Championship until 2013. So FIDE's 5-year cycle that culminated in the 2012 Championship for Classical Chess happened without Magnus Carlsen, the No. 1 player for much of that time, who simply noted that he'd spent his time improving his skills as a chess player instead. Carlsen amazingly did improve. In 2011, he went on an impressive event win streak. His consistent interest in Blitz and Rapid Chess had already made him one of the best in those disciplines too. But beyond competition, he also began to break out into the cultural mainstream. He was in the 2013 Time Top 100. He was inking deals with sponsors. He had a 60 Minutes episode. But do you enjoy it when you see your opponent squirm? Yes, I do. I enjoy it when I see my opponent really suffering, when he knows that I've outsmarted him. Some questioned whether the demands from this kind of publicity had the potential to damage Carlsen's competitive hopes. He wasn't worried. And when Carlsen returned to the Candidates to qualify for the World Chess Championship in 2013, it was because he was again the highest-rated player in the world. It's a big deal. I've been really motivated for the Candidates Tournament. If I were to become World Champion at one point, that would be great. But the qualifying tournament didn't go as he'd hoped. He'd had the chance to close out the win on the tournament's final day, but lost with white to Peter Svidler. Hold on. He's played Rook H6. Rook H6 looks like a bad move to me. Rook H6 looks like a horror move. That meant that Magnus was relying on Vladimir Kramnik to lose, not win or draw his match. It was the only way he could win through tie breaks. But Magnus got his miracle. This is absolutely game over. And that's it. Kramnik has resigned. Meaning that Magnus Carlsen, he lost the final game. He needed a miracle from the gods. He needed Kramnik to lose. And Kramnik, against all odds, has lost. So it went out of control. And that shouldn't happen. But I wasn't looking at the other game at all. It was just lucky for me that when I got to the time control, I saw that Kramnik was losing as well. The format meant that the reigning world champion, Indian GM Vishwanathan Anand, would now defend his title against Carlsen. In the 2016 documentary Magnus, the two players are contrasted in part through their relationship to computers. Magnus' style is about getting both players to think for themselves, so that it's a battle of the mind rather than the battle of who can use the computer best. But Anand's focus on openings and memorization seemed to be a different conclusion to the question of computers than Magnus, who seemed to favor getting his opponents out of their comfort zone and into a trap-like positional endgame. In 2012, Anand had described Carlsen, who he marked as clearly an eventual contender for the championship, as a sort of savant. If you'd asked me, will Magnus be world champion one day, I always said yes. I mean, I must have realized it would have to be at my expense. But there was a period in 2009 and 10 where I simply could not understand how he won so many games. The championship was set to take place at Anand's hometown of Chennai, India. The format gave players a maximum of 12 games to determine a victor using standard scoring rules. We are live here at the Hyatt Hotel in Chennai, and we are moments away from one of the most anticipated world championship matches in living memory. After a series of draws, common in high-level chess, Carlsen was finally able to break through in Game 5 with White. But tell me, have you seen any player like Magnus, you know, who continues to push us even in the 5th hour, 6th hour, even 7th hour of the game? Like him, you mean? Yeah. No. That's what makes him different. He has resigned. The first decisive game of the match. That will put a lot of pressure on Anand. And then, shockingly, with Black in the next game. Oh, big action going on. Wow. Lots of things happening. So we don't know if Anand actually blundered the pawn or sacrificed the pawn, what's going on here. Because Black is up a pawn now. Before he was just slightly better, now he's up a pawn. And it's game over. It's game over. Anand just resigned. Finally, in Game 9, Magnus sealed the match. And look how Magnus has kept the pressure on time-wise. Vishy's going to have to make a decision now. If it doesn't work, it's all over. Oh my god! I think Knight f1 is a huge blunder. Magnus Carlsen could be a step away from the world championship. Poor old Vishy. He's resigned. Oh my goodness. He's resigned and he's going to be... Oh my goodness. Magnus Carlsen is half a point away. The Norwegian camp is going crazy. And we have a new world champion. Unbelievable. Magnus Carlsen. Champion of the world. Magnus had become the world champion at age 22. But it was more than a one-off victory. It was the beginning of a Kasparov-like era where he stayed number one in the world. In 2014, he defended his title, beating Anand for a second time. And that probably is the end of the game. End of the match. As you can see on your screens. Vishy could replace his opponent. Congratulations to Magnus for retaining the title. This has been a very, very dramatic game. But he also achieved the triple crown in that year. His classical championship joining Blitz and Rapid Championships for the first time ever in open chess. He was called on again to defend his world championship in 2016. The challenger was Sergey Karyakin, nicknamed the Minister of Defense and the only player when Magnus hit GM that had already done it younger. Since 2009, he represented Russia's Chess Federation and sported their citizenship instead of Ukraine's. The 2016 World Championship was truly representative of a new era of chess. Two young prodigies would face off in a newly reunified chess world where computers were more critical than ever. After four drawn games, some of them seemingly winnable, Carlsen seemed almost worn down, unable to really weigh in during a press conference. It took until the eighth game for a player to break through. And it was Karyakin with black. After the smoke clearing, the evaluation of the position was becoming more and more clear. And that was that Karyakin, for the first time in the match, probably had a very, very clear advantage. I don't want to say that Magnus played badly today because he really tried. And, I mean, he created a very interesting game. I didn't play very well. He played better than me and he won. Yeah, that was a difficult moment. I mean, not least because it's the only time I've actually been down in a World Championship match. But also because, yeah, it was extremely tough psychologically for me. Now Carlsen was under pressure, with only four games to even it up. But he managed it in Game 10. Karyakin tries a last-ditch stand to bring the king around to a7, but simply resigns after the king reaches f6. The threat is king to g7. The rook will be forced to leave the h-file and white will get his desired two-pass pawn. It's a huge relief, obviously. I mean, I haven't won in 10 games and that's something that's basically not happened to me before. It's been a struggle and it will continue to be a struggle. The series headed to a rapid tiebreak. And both were strong players. Anything could happen. It's absolutely very special because, first of all, it's Magnus' birthday. And we can say that by the end of the day, we are going to know who is the World Champion. But Magnus would not be denied. He took on c7, rather than playing tickle, and immediately resigned after the move rook a1, which is just a skewer of the queen to the bishop, winning a piece for nothing, and followed by mate, really. The nicest move to finish the game that Carlsen played, which was queen to h6, and the challenger immediately resigned. Next, in 2018, we saw a different Magnus defend his title. One who needed to be diligent to fend off Fabiano Caruana, who so often held the number two spot behind Magnus. Arguably, he faces his biggest challenge to date. Fabiano Caruana won through in the Candidates Tournament to become the challenger in March, and since then has been on a superb series of results, so that now the two players are clearly number one and number two in the world. So basically, this is the match that we've all been waiting for. Fabiano's incredible preparation proved a match for Carlsen as the two players drew all 12 games. But Magnus again showed his strength in the rapid tiebreaks. It all comes down to this. I think the people are excited for today. How could you not be, right? Rapid tiebreaks to start with. We've seen 12 draws, and I think the people are ready for some blood to be spilled. Rook g5, king f3, rook f5 check. And then I take a try. And then you take the pawn. And then I get into a winning endgame. I think Magnus might have just won the game with that ten ball. Oh, wow. You know, I hate to say it so strongly, but I think this one is just about over. We thought he was in must-win territory with this game. Talk about must-win territory next game. Black now has to play the move, knight e6. Yeah, that's not pretty. Fabiano's chances may finally be running out. The game is over, which means the match is over, which means that Magnus Carlsen has retained his world championship title. Magnus' dominance was not confined to the world championship either. Starting in mid-2018 to October 2020, he set the record for the longest undefeated streak. 42 wins and 83 draws for 125 total games undefeated in classical chess. And as Chess.com pointed out, his average opponent during this time was rated 2745, a top-20 rating. Carlsen's emergence was nothing short of revelatory for chess. It gave fans a charismatic and passionate advocate with both star power and unparalleled ability. At the start of my career, there was sort of a conscious strategy of trying to bring chess to more people and for me not to say too many controversial things because I wanted to sort of build a brand. I would say the last 6-7 years I haven't cared too much about it at all. So I definitely don't go out of my way to say to be edgy or anything. I generally say what I think. Whenever people misinterpret what I say or whatever it's because I'm being honest and I don't think I am. But the chess world Magnus ruled was about to become much bigger. When you're at your lowest, when life seems at its most grim, when your money isn't working for you the way it should, only one app can save you. Seb, man, the Cash App ad, it's not supposed to be in the voice. Why are you doing the voice? It's Cash App, dude. It's, like, important. If you direct deposit your paychecks, you can get free overdraft coverage. How many times do I have to tell you? It's a normal thing. People use Cash App every day. Just use your normal voice or else. Okay, okay. In the most incredible deal in esports history, Cash App will give you up to $50 of free overdraft coverage when you direct deposit at least $300 in paychecks per month in the app. Seb, I swear to God, man, just say it normally. You do not want to piss me off today. Grant yourself peace of mind and get that little extra bit of protection with Cash App's free overdraft coverage. Don't say I didn't warn you, Seb. What are you gonna do? Is that a f***ing fish? What else have you got? Guess you're about to find out. During the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, many rediscovered old passions. And for some, that was chess. Others hadn't even considered watching chess on Twitch or on YouTube until they happened across it. And finally, there were people who did play over-the-board chess, but no longer could. Whatever reason they'd had to avoid online chess now had a compelling counter-argument. Online chess was everywhere. He just lost. Yes! Yes! Yes! Exactly what we practiced for. Yes! I do believe that King f6 was a mouse slip. If he had played King to g6, the game would have been a draw. But mouse slips are a part of the game. As my chat has told me, it's simply a skill issue. So if you don't have the skills, that's just how it goes. Hikaru said I could spend a life and not understand two pages. Are you seeing this, Hikaru? I understand every word. I think chess is definitely evolving in the sense that it's becoming more part of popular culture. I'm not sure that the players or the personalities have changed too much. You add the release of The Queen's Gambit on Netflix to all that, and chess was having a moment. Suddenly, chess.com was scrambling to scale their services to meet demand. I think in terms of how chess has been depicted in media, then Queen's Gambit really stands out for me. Mostly because there were a lot of interesting positions that I hadn't seen before. So I was really captivated by that part. I know that Gary helped with Queen's Gambit, other people as well, and there were really some interesting moments there. On December 31st, we had 7 million active members on chess.com in a single day for the first time. On January 20th, we had 10 million members. Traffic on chess.com in general has nearly doubled, especially during peak hours from noon to 4 p.m. Eastern. An entirely new kind of chess fan was born, one who mostly accepted the current digital-first nature of chess without complaint and who sought more of everything. Game analysis, historical videos, reviews of recent games, and even chess theory all saw a resurgence. On YouTube and Twitch, existing GMs and content creators exploded in popularity as demand for chess, any kind of chess, skyrocketed. I'm just going to literally move all my pieces over here. You just can't. I mean, I'm just going to throw them. What? Let's try this one. How do knights move? I generally think that the surge in popularity for chess the last few years, it's been huge, net positive. I think we should focus on the positive, the fact that it's bringing more people to chess, that it's increasing the size of the ecosystem. Then there were events that brought chess into a new world, like Ludwig's incredibly popular Mogul Chess Boxing Championship, which prominently featured the sport of chess boxing. Ten seconds. Will she deliver the killing blow and win? Whether discovering chess or rediscovering it, Magnus' name was a natural starting point, and he continued to impress fans as he went on to defend his title in 2021 against Jan Nepomniachtchi. Notably, unlike the 12 drawn games and tiebreaker win against Karuana at the 2018 World Championship, Carlsen won four games in 2021, including two with Black after a stunning collapse from Jan. He played G3? Oh my gosh. Oh. Wait a second. Seriously? G3 is a horrific blunder, and White is going to lose the game within the next 10 moves. I don't think it's anything very complicated. This is just unbelievable. Don't play F6. Wait a second. We have a resignation. We have history. He also earned his third triple crown. With the next World Championship taking place in 2023, Carlsen's reign would span for a decade, even though he had debated stepping out after his first win. Through streamed tournaments and his own content, Magnus was reaching more people, and the people seemed to enjoy a closer look. Yeah, I'm sorry, dude. I'm not that slow, nor that weak. How frustrating is that final game? Yeah, I blundered, and he played well. Thank you. See you tomorrow. Well, we... Oh. I thought it was a joke. I need some more content for my new NFT collection. Yeah, of course. I'm really sorry about this. It's going to have to be King. We're going to win the game. That didn't mean that he was uncontroversial, though. In fact, he courted controversy. I will most probably play in 2021. If I were to win, I have no idea whether I would play the next one. First, Magnus' criticism of the format of the World Championship started anew, and he ultimately announced, after months of speculation, that he would not defend his title in 2023. I was sort of deciding after that, you know, one by one, whether to play or not, and then finally I decided in 2021 that, yeah, this is probably going to be my last. I'm very, very happy with that now. I feel like I've had the experience of playing the World Championship. He explained that his dissatisfaction with the format was part of the decision, but also noted that he still aimed to be the world's best chess player and that he wasn't taking an activist stance. I don't think I would play in the format there is now, but that's not to say I'm trying to change anything. I'm happy to stay out of it. If they do overhaul the cycle and, first of all, make the game shorter, then, you know, I don't rule it out, but I don't have any plans to play. But soon after, he was drawn into another controversy, one surrounding potential cheating. With a new 53-game unbeaten streak in classical chess, Carlsen ran into 19-year-old GM Hans Niemann rated 200 points lower at the 2022 Sinqveld Cup. H3 also wins, but I will just play King e5 here. I don't really want to touch my h4 and g4 setup because it doesn't, yeah. And there we have it. Wow. What a result. Wow. I can just imagine the chat going nuts at this point. Like, what have we witnessed? After a very accurate game from Niemann, Carlsen lost the game and his streak. And the next day, he dropped out of the tournament and tweeted out the famous Jose Mourinho clip. The series was actually preceded by another meeting between the two players at a Blitz tournament in Miami, where Hans had lost three in a row to Magnus after taking Game 1 with a wild mic drop. Hans, yesterday was a terrible day for you, and today you start out with a masterpiece. How would you summarize it? Chess speaks for itself. Is it something special doing this against Magnus, Hans? American GM Hikaru Nakamura explained his opinion on Magnus' thinking this way. I think that Magnus believes that Hans probably is cheating. Again, unproven. Who knows what the reality is? He probably does believe that in his heart of hearts that Hans cheated in that game. So I think Magnus' way of basically saying that is like, he's not going to actually say it, but he's putting out this clip saying, if I talk, I'm in trouble, and he's withdrawing to make the point without publicly making the point. Then, Carlsen, facing Niemann in an online tournament, resigned after one move. I don't think he cheated in the Sinquefield Cup, but everything else is still in the air. Sorry, Alejandro, I just have to interrupt you because the game started and Magnus has logged off. What has happened? Magnus has resigned. Magnus Carlsen just resigned. Got up and left. Did Carlsen resign? No, it's a bug, right? There's no way. There's no way Carlsen resigned. It's move two. The chess world exploded and Carlsen was reprimanded by FIDE for his approach. Then, a report from Chess.com confirmed that Niemann had cheated online as recently as 2020, but he claimed he never did so in over-the-board chess. I have never cheated in an over-the-board game other than when I was 12 years old. I have never, ever, ever, and I would never do that. That is the worst thing I could ever do, cheat in a tournament with prize money. Wild theories like vibrating sex toys were thrown around for what methods someone might use to cheat in person. What started as a meme but actually turned out to be a very plausible idea was the concept of using a vibrating toy somewhere within your body that transmits chess moves to you through pulses of the vibration motor and allows you to play chess at a considerably higher level than you actually are. But Niemann wasn't joking around and eventually sued Carlsen, Nakamura, and Chess.com. The latter party had removed Niemann from their site but also had agreements with the two players. In 2023, the two camps announced a settlement. Carlsen agreed he was willing to play against Niemann on Chess.com in the future and Niemann's account was restored. It's not surprising that Carlsen takes cheating seriously, even if not everyone approves of his approach in this specific instance. For him, the problem is easy to describe. I think the biggest problem with cheating in chess is, I mean it's very simple, it's that engines are stronger than humans. It's hard to know how common over-the-board cheating really is, but with engines getting so strong already, there's no doubt that chess tournaments will need to continue to take measures against it. Even if it's not that big a problem right now, and I'm not going to judge whether it is, I think it is the existential threat to the game. But even if no one ever cheats with a chess engine during a game, the engines still distort the fabric of chess. Once the number of pieces goes below a certain amount, seven, then Stockfish can actually solve the game perfectly. Chess is solved if there are seven pieces remaining on a chess board or less. Exactly. A decade earlier, as he won his first world championship, Carlsen wondered whether he could force Vichy Anand out of the comfort of his deep computer-assisted preparation. But chess only became more heavily analyzed from there. Engines became better and faster than before. Memorized preparation became more critical. So Carlsen has also started to get involved with research and push to play more chess 960. Sometimes called Freestyle Chess or Fisher Random Chess. In this format, the back row of chess pieces is each round randomized and symmetrically reflected with some basic criteria for layout, like bishops on different colored squares. With the pieces in new starting positions, the heavily researched openings of the starting layouts go from detailed roadmaps to distant lessons. Carlsen has advocated for exploring the format and has attended and organized tournaments that use the rules. For someone with the tactical ability that he has, it makes sense and it makes for great chess, too. Fisher Random Chess, I think, it's always been played in rapid time control, which never made a lot of sense to me. Since you have to think for move one, then you need more time to think. And for classical chess, there's a lot of theory, so you would need less time. So it's better to play rapid and blitz. I feel like the format really works. We're basically thrown into an unfamiliar middle game from move one, where the price of a mistake can be incredibly high. I just hope this continues. It was really a refreshing change of pace. Ultimately, it's another example of Carlsen's lifelong and visionary approach to chess. He never allowed himself to be held back based on what seemed possible, and he shattered records as a result. For most, he's already the greatest of all time. But for someone like Carlsen, who deeply loves the game and has mastered it in a way no one else has, even reaching the top and staying there might not be enough. Now my new goal is to reach a 2,900 rating. And for me, it's not so much about reaching the goal. It's about having a goal, because that motivates me to do the right things, to have at least a chance of achieving that goal. Because I feel achieving that would be special. That would be a historic achievement.