Endgames of the World Champions from Fischer to Carlsen
Let endgame expert Dr Karsten Müller show and explain the finesses of the world champions. Although they had different styles each and every one of them played the endgame exceptionally well, so take the opportunity to enjoy and learn from some of the best endgames in the history of chess.
Magnus Carlsen was born on November 30th, 1990 in Tonsberg, Norway, as the second child of Henrik and Sigrun Carlsen. He learned to play chess at the age of five and shows serious interest in chess at age nine. Soon he is rushing from success to success, year after year...
Master Class Vol.8: Magnus Carlsen
Scarcely any world champion has managed to captivate chess lovers to the extent Carlsen has. The enormously talented Norwegian hasn't been systematically trained within the structures of a major chess-playing nation such as Russia, the Ukraine or China.
| 1999 | Carlsen plays his first chess tournament. |
| 2000 | Carlsen becomes Norwegian champion Under-11. |
| 2001 | 10-year-old Carlsen participates in the European Team Championship for the Norwegian club Asker SK in September. |
| 2002 | Carlsen is second in the World Youth Under-12. |
| 2003 | In August, Carlsen is awarded the IM title. |
| 2004 | From January to April Carlsen gets three GM norms and becomes grandmaster at the age of 13, 4 months and 27 days — behind Sergey Karjakin he was the second youngest grandmaster of all time. |
| 2005 | Carlsen is tenth in the World Cup and qualifies for the 2007 Candidates Tournament. |
| 2006 | Together with Alexander Motylev, Carlsen wins the B tournament in Wijk aan Zee. |
| 2007 | Carlsen wins in Biel and comes to the semi-finals of the World Cup, where he is eliminated by Gata Kamsky. |
| 2008 | Carlsen wins the A tournament in Wijk aan Zee with Levon Aronian. During the Chess Masters in Bilbao in September, he is ranked #1 on the unofficial live world rankings for five days. |
| 2009 | Carlsen starts working with Garry Kasparov. In October, Carlsen wins the tournament in Nanjing with 8 out of 10, 2½ points ahead of Veselin Topalov, earning an Elo performance of 3002. |
| 2010 | Carlsen is the official number 1 in the world for the first time in January. In March 2010 he ends his collaboration with Kasparov. |
| 2011 | In July, Carlsen finally establishes himself as the world's number 1 and has been leading the world ranking list ever since. |
| 2012 | At the world blitz and rapid championships in July, Carlsen finishes in second place in both tournaments. |
| 2013 | Carlsen wins the Candidates Tournament, played in March, ahead of Vladimir Kramnik. Decisive was the tiebreak of the larger number of games won. In November 2013, Carlsen beats Viswanathan Anand to become 16th undisputed World Champion in chess history. |
| 2014 | In May, Carlsen arrives at an Elo rating of 2882 points — the highest Elo rating a human has ever achieved. In June, he wins the World Championship in rapid chess and the World Championship in blitz chess and is thus World Champion in classical, rapid and blitz simultaneously. In November, he defends his title in classical chess in the rematch against Vishy Anand. |
| 2015 | In October, Carlsen defends his title as World Rapid Chess Champion, but at the Blitz World Championship he lands "only" in sixth place. |
| 2016 | Carlsen defends his world title against Sergey Karjakin. After 12 classical games, Carlsen wins the rapid tiebreak on November 30th, his 26th birthday, 3-1. |
| 2017 | In December, Carlsen again becomes World Champion in blitz chess. |
| 2018 | In January, Carlsen wins the Tata Steel tournament in Wijk aan Zee after a tiebreak against Anish Giri. It's Carlsen's sixth win in Wijk aan Zee, and no other player has won this tournament as many times. In November 2018, Carlsen defended his world title in the World Championship match against Fabiano Caruana by a 3-0 victory in the rapid tiebreak after all twelve classical games were drawn. In the Elo list of December 2018 Carlsen remains number one at 2835, but only three points ahead of Caruana. |
Carlsen has also provided a boost to the profile of chess worldwide, but especially in his native Norway, where a chess boom has seen millions of people follow his World Championship bouts against Anand, Karjakin and Caruana. Carlsen has worked as a model for the fashion brand G-Star and also appeared in advertising for other companies like Porsche. And in 2016 the documentary 'Magnus' was released, describing Carlsen's career up until he won the 2013 World Championship title.
Concentration | Photo: Lennart Ootes
Carlsen attaches great importance to physical fitness and is known to fight to the end in almost all his games. He likes to forego theoretical duels to instead strive for a playable position in which he can put the opponent under pressure in the middlegame and endgame. In so doing, Carlsen has already changed modern chess — even though he is only 28 years old.
Happy Birthday!
Translation from German: Macauley Peterson
