Magnus Carlsen on his chess career

"I am chaotic and lazy"

Interview by Maik Grossekathöfer

Carlsen: I have no idea. I wouldn’t want to know it anyway. It might turn out to be a nasty surprise.

Carlsen: And that’s precisely what would be terrible. Of course it is important for a chess player to be able to concentrate well, but being too intelligent can also be a burden. It can get in your way. I am convinced that the reason the Englishman John Nunn never became world champion is that he is too clever for that.

Carlsen: At the age of 15, Nunn started studying mathematics in Oxford; he was the youngest student in the last 500 years, and at 23 he did a PhD in algebraic topology. He has so incredibly much in his head. Simply too much. His enormous powers of understanding and his constant thirst for knowledge distracted him from chess.

Carlsen: Right. I am a totally normal guy. My father is considerably more intelligent than I am.

Carlsen: That depends on the game situation. Sometimes 15 to 20. But the trick is to correctly assess the position at the end of the calculation.

Carlsen: I’m not saying that I am totally stupid. But my success mainly has to do with the fact that I had the opportunity to learn more, more quickly. It has become easier to get hold of information. The players from the Soviet Union used to be at a huge advantage; in Moscow they had access to vast archives, with countless games carefully recorded on index cards. Nowadays anyone can buy this data on DVD for 150 euros; one disk holds 4.5 million games. There are also more books than there used to be. And then of course I started working with a computer earlier than Vladimir Kramnik or Viswanathan Anand.

Carlsen: I was eleven or twelve. I used the computer to prepare for tournaments, and I played on the Internet. Nowadays, children start using a computer at an even earlier age; they are already learning the rules on screen. In that sense I am already old-fashioned. Technological progress leads to younger and younger top players, everywhere in the world.

Carlsen: As a young player you have a lot of energy, a lot of strength, you are very motivated. But young players are often not good at defending a position; they cannot cope well when fate turns against them. The fact is simply that experience is a central issue. One of the most important things in chess is pattern recognition: the ability to recognise typical themes and images on the board, characteristics of a position and their consequences. To a certain degree you can learn that while training, but there is nothing like playing routine. I have always made sure to get that. I am only 19, but I have certainly already played a thousand games in the classic style.

Carlsen: I must have been five and a half or six years old. My father taught my oldest sister, Ellen, and me the rules. Unlike Ellen, I was not particularly interested; I was bad and soon stopped again. It was not until I was eight that I started occupying myself with chess again.

Carlsen: I took a board and recapitulated games for myself which my father showed me at the time. Why was this or that move made? I discovered the secrets of the game for myself. It was fascinating. Then, after a few months, I also read books about openings.

Carlsen: I don’t know. No more than I can tell you why I wanted to do 50-piece jigsaw puzzles when I was not even two years old. Why did I want to know all the common car makes at the age of two and a half? Why did I read books about geography at the age of five? I don’t know why I learnt all the countries of the world off by heart, including their capitals and populations. Chess was probably just another pastime.

Carlsen: I saw Ellen, my sister, playing. I think I wanted to beat her at it.

Carlsen: After the game she didn’t touch a board again for four years.

Carlsen: A little later. My father said, if I trained a bit more I could perhaps take part in the Norwegian championships of the under 11s. I thought to myself: Oh, that might be fun. My result was okay. I won the tournament the following year.

Carlsen: Just before my ninth birthday, in a game of lightning chess.

Carlsen: Look over there, the chess freak? No, that didn‘t happen. Quite the contrary. Last summer they voted me pupil of the year.

Carlsen: No. I’m not a disciplined thinker. Organisation is not my thing; I am chaotic and tend to be lazy. My trainer recognised that and as a rule allowed me to practise whatever I felt like at the time.

Carlsen: I’m not a genius. Sloppy? Perhaps. It’s like this: When I am feeling good, I train a lot. When I feel bad, I don’t bother. I don’t enjoy working to a timetable. Systematic learning would kill me.

Carlsen: When I was 13, my parents took me out of school for a year. They travelled around the world with me and my sisters, and on the way they taught us. That was fantastic, much more effective than sitting in school. I do understand that it is a problem for a teacher having to look after 30 pupils. But the slow speed was quite frustrating for me. I didn’t miss school at all.

Carlsen: We travelled by car to Austria, Montenegro, Greece, Italy and Hungary. The countries in the East are poorer than I thought, by the way. In Rome I visited St. Peter’s Basilica and saw a football match at the Olympic Stadium. Wonderful. When we were in Moscow, my mother and my sisters went to the Bolshoi Theatre, I didn’t.

Carlsen: I ask you, ballet! That’s boring. I sat down in an Internet café and played chess on the Web. Later we were Dubai, that’s where I fulfilled the last norm that was necessary to become a grandmaster. And in Lybia I played the world championships.

Carlsen: Certainly. The pressure has increased, everyone wants to beat me. I also notice a growing responsibility for having to structure the game, because my opponents refuse to do so. They are more cautious than they were just a year ago.

Carlsen: Without any problems so far. I still sleep soundly and long. I feel sorry for players who are always lying awake at night, brooding over their games. Some colleagues literally become depressive during a long tournament. I enjoy playing squash or tennis to switch off; I watch television series on DVD.

Carlsen: It can’t be three. I’ve only seen two of them.

Carlsen: No.

Carlsen: Rarely. I prefer to chat with friends on the Internet or play poker online.

Carlsen: Of course. For what else?

Carlsen: If I take a game seriously, I do. If not, I sometimes lose. But that doesn’t matter. What is important is that I have a life beyond chess.

Carlsen: Chess should not become an obsession. Otherwise there’s a danger that you will slide off into a parallel world, that you lose your sense of reality, get lost in the infinite cosmos of the game. You become crazy. I make sure that I have enough time between tournaments to go home in order to do other things. I like hiking and skiing, and I play football in a club.

Carlsen: Real Madrid, the royals.

Carlsen: Oh, yes. If I am feeling gloomy before a game, I listen to gloomy music.

Carlsen: You probably won’t know it, a song by Lil Jon. A silly rap song, but it does me good, I loosen up. I listen to music on the Internet, but don`t download any songs. It’s all totally legal. Many people may find that boring, but I think it is important.

Carlsen: No. In terms of our playing skills we are not that far apart. There are many things I am better at than he is. And vice versa. Kasparov can calculate more alternatives, whereas my intuition is better. I immediately know how to rate a situation and what plan is necessary. I am clearly superior to him in that respect.

Carlsen: He still has loads of unused ideas for openings. And the fact that he has played against most of my opponents himself is invaluable. He senses what mood they are in, how they will open the game. I can’t do that.

Carlsen: The cooperation has now entered its next natural stage. We reached our goal of becoming the number one considerably ahead of schedule.With that a major goal had been reached. We decided that in the future I should be responsible for all career decisions, without constant guidance from Garry, before and during events.

Carlsen: No. We remain in contact and I have the opportunity to confer with Garry regularly. I will also attend training sessions with him. I want to stress: the last 12 months have been of immense value to me, and I continue to listen to Garry‘s advice.

Carlsen: I get a certain amount of fan mail from younger women.

Carlsen: It depends.

Carlsen: That is private and confidential.

• Copyright Spiegel –
  reproduced with kind permission
• Der Spiegel Online (English)

Previous Spiegel chess stories

• 2002: Man vs Machine in Bahrain - Part 1
• 2004: Vladimir Kramnik:
  ‘Chess is so deep, I simply feel lost’
• 2006: The last man vs machine match?
• 2006: Garry Kasparov: 'We will march!'
• 2008: Vishy Anand: 'Chess is like acting'
• 2008: The Great Chess Doping Scandal