Magnus Carlsen

Magnus Carlsen (2025)

Magnus Carlsen (2012)

Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen (born 30 November 1990) is a Norwegian chess grandmaster who is currently the number one ranked player in the world. In January 2010 he became the seventh player ranked number one in the world on the official FIDE rankings list.

Quotes

• I am not some sort of freak. I might be very good at chess but I'm just a normal person.
  • Meet Magnus Carlsen, The New King of Chess - TIME, Eben Harrell Friday, Dec. 25, 2009

• I love the game, and I love to compete, but I am not obsessed with the struggle.
  • Meet Magnus Carlsen, The New King of Chess - TIME, Eben Harrell Friday, Dec. 25, 2009

• I get more upset at losing at other things than chess. I always get upset when I lose at Monopoly.
  • Magnus Carlsen, chess prodigy from Norway - The New York Times
• I feel sorry for players who are always lying awake at night, brooding over their games.
  • ChessBase.com - Magnus Carlsen on his chess career, 15 March 2010

• He played the Berlin, I played the most solid line, yada yada yada, let's go to the doping control.
  • Magnus Carlsen on the press conference after holding Vishy Anand to a draw in the 8th game of the World championships, using only 15 minutes of his thinking time.

• The best way to deal with losing is not to lose.
• When did I understand it was a draw? I understood it immediately. That doesn't mean you shouldn't play.
  • World Chess Championship 2018, Game 9 press conference

• I think in general the future of classical chess as it is now is a little bit dubious. I would love to see more Fischer [Random] Chess being played over-the-board in a classical format. That would be very interesting to me, because I feel that that particular format is pretty well suited to classical chess as basically you need a lot of time in order to be able to play the game even remotely decently. And you can see that in the way that Fischer [Random] Chess is being played now when it is played in a rapid format. The quality of the games isn't very high because we make such fundamental mistakes in the opening. We don't understand it nearly enough and I think that would increase a lot if we were given a classical time control there. So I would definitely hope for that.
  • November 2020 [1]

• I'm certainly somebody who hopes for more 960 in classical format because I feel like 960 is not that suited to rapid and blitz because you're just gonna play too poorly. You're just gonna have absolutely no clue, but if you actually have time to sit down and think for half an hour on your first five moves, then maybe you can get some more understanding of the game.
  • in a stream with Eric Hansen, April 2021 [2] 53:29 - 54:36 [3]

FIDE jeans incident

Main article: World Rapid Chess Championship 2024#Withdrawal of Magnus Carlsen

• I said, ‘I'll change tomorrow if that's okay, I just didn't even realize it today,’ but they said, ‘Well, you have to change now,’ and, well, at that point it became, you know, a bit of a matter of principle for me. [...] And yeah, so here we are.
  • [4]

• Honestly, I'm too old at this point to care too much. If this is what [the FIDE wants] to do [...] It's fine by me [...] [I'll] probably head off to somewhere where the weather is a bit nicer than here.
  • [5]

• Of course, I could have changed. Obviously, I didn’t want to. I stand by that.
  • [6]

• They can enforce their rules, that's fine by me [...] my response is that fine, then I'm out, like, fuck you.
  • [7]

Quotes about Carlsen

• You could say that both Fischer and Carlsen had or have the ability to let chess look simple. – Viswanathan Anand
  • Chessdom - Anand about Chess Classics and his games with Carlsen
• In six months of working with Magnus I have seen in him many of the qualities of the great champions. – Garry Kasparov
  • ChessBase.com - Breaking news Carlsen and Kasparov join forces, 7 September 2009
• The chess world is officially a joke. THIS HAS NEVER BEEN DONE IN HISTORY. I can’t believe that the official body of chess is being controlled by a singular player FOR THE 2ND TIME THIS WEEK. THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE WORLD CHAMPION!
  • Hans Niemann, referring to FIDE allowing Magnus and Nepomniachtchi to share the title of 2024 World Blitz Chess Champion after exempting Magnus from a dress code ban on jeans in the preceding Rapid Championship.[8]