Norwegian chess player Magnus Carlsen is seen during the finals of the World Blitz Championship 2009 in Moscow, Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009
At age 13, he was the third youngest grandmaster in history. A few years later, he was already beating the world’s top players. And on Jan. 1, 19-year-old Magnus Carlsen of Norway will officially become the youngest person in history to earn chess's No. 1 ranking. TIME caught up with the grandmaster at a tournament in London to probe the mind of a chess genius.
When people find out that you are the top-ranked chess player in the
world, do you have to deal with them assuming you are 40,000 times more
intelligent than them?
Yeah, that can be a little annoying. I try to tell people that I am like
them. I am not some sort of freak. I might be very good at chess but I'm
just a normal person.
Well, you're clearly not a normal intellect. How many moves ahead can
you calculate on the chess board?
Sometimes 15 to 20 moves ahead. But the trick is evaluating the position at
the end of those calculations.
Your coach, former world champion Garry Kasparov, says your
strength is not calculation, but rather your ability to intuit the right
moves, even if their ultimate purpose is not
clear. Is that right?
I'm good at sensing the nature of the position and where I should put my
pieces. You have to choose the move that feels right sometimes; that's what
intuition is. It's very hard to explain.
Does Kasparov talk to you about his life outside of chess, and his
dissident political movement in Russia?
He's my chess coach. When it comes to his struggle with Putin, I don't want
to get involved with that.
The English grandmaster Nigel Short says that chess computers, which
now regularly beat the top human players, are taking away some of the mystery of the
game. He likens them to "chainsaws chopping down the Amazon." What do you make
of that?
I can see his point. Any amateur can look at top-level games, and instead of
appreciating the mystery behind the moves they will simply look at the
evaluation of the computer. I'm not afraid the computer will find all the
ideas and leave no room for imagination.
Do you use computers in your chess studies?
I don't use a board when I am studying on my own. People come over to my house and say, "You must
have a lot of chess sets." I say, "Well, we might have one somewhere, but
I’m not sure."
Do you see chess as a game of combat or a game of art?
Combat. I am trying to beat the guy sitting across from me and trying to
choose the moves that are most unpleasant for him and his style. Of course
some really beautiful games feel like they are art, but that's not my
goal.
Do you have any explanation for why more women have not entered the
super=elite fields?
[Hungarian] Judit Polgar was once in the top 10, but I don't know why there
aren't more. As opposed to some other people, I don't really think there are
any genetic reasons.
You don't buy the pseudo-psychological explanation that their maternal
instincts prevent them from readily sacrificing pieces?
Actually, lots of women play very aggressive chess. So I don't buy that.
Chess has had prodigies, most notably Paul Morphy and Bobby Fischer,
who have been lost to madness. Do you fear that trying to master a game of
near-infinite variation can make you insane?
It's too hard to predict the future, but right now I don’t see myself going mad.
It's easy to get obsessed with chess. That's what happened with Fischer and
Morphy. I don't have the same obsession. I love the game, and I love to
compete, but I am not obsessed with the struggle.