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Indian Express
4 days ago
- Sport
- Indian Express
Want to be a good chess player? Take a leaf out of Magnus Carlsen's book
In May last year, Magnus Carlsen, the best chess player of this generation, posted a photo of himself where the Norwegian is standing in front of a pool, against a backdrop of pure blue sky, wearing a T-shirt and shorts. It's a perfect day to be in the pool. But instead, world no 1 Carlsen has a book in hand called Understanding Rook Endgames. The caption read: 'Polishing my endgames before a busy month, with four tournaments coming up, starting with the Grand Chess Tour in Warsaw.' With the business of learning and training for chess now being largely computer-driven, with engines acting as guides for young players and super elite grandmasters alike, the photo is a reminder of what made a player like Carlsen great. His love for books is well documented in biographies: there are tales from his childhood about how he would sit by himself on a separate table for meals because he would always have a book or a chess board as his companion. When Simen Agdestein, Norway's first grandmaster and Carlsen's first real trainer, starts talking about a young Carlsen, he talks about how the boy had a voracious appetite for reading. Agdestein says Carlsen would pick out a book from his personal library at NTG (Norwegian School for Elite Sport where Agdestein was in charge of chess), thumb through the index and then read any chapter he found fascinating. The book wouldn't be left alone until the chapter ended. Henrik Carlsen shares similar tales about his son. He says when his son was eight, he played in an Under 11 competition. Back then, he was 'not even the best eight-year-old' in the country. 'He had just started playing, but he soon discovered that he was making more progress than the others, partly because he was working more on chess. He was studying chess. He was looking at games, reading books already at eight. At that age, he was reading a lot of opening theory and then he was making progress. He was starting to beat players that earlier had beaten him. He was outpacing all the others. 'His reading is much less now. But from like the age of nine to somewhere in his 20s, he read a lot. Still when he gets new books he can open it and then you won't get his attention before he's finished. At least until a couple of years ago, it would still be like if you give him a book, you know you can't talk to him,' Henrik told The Indian Express during the recently-concluded Norway Chess tournament. Agdestein links Magnus's early success to his reading habits. 'When we started working together, he wasn't very good in endings. That was his weakest point. Then I gave him a book: Fundamental Chess Endings by Frank Lamprecht and Karsten Müller. And that was that! After that, he's been the best in the world in endings,' beams Agdestein in an interview with The Indian Express. 'Many years later, when he was preparing for his first World Chess Championship match with Anand, I saw a photo he had posted where that same book was on the shelf in the background. He was still reading that book, or at least referring to it.' 'I see lots of players who barely have opened the book, and still they become good players. So it's possible to become very good without reading books, too, obviously,' says Agdestein before adding: 'But what makes Magnus stand out is that it seems like Magnus has read almost everything (in chess). He has a photographic memory, which is useful, of course. But still, he is very properly schooled, to put it that way, because he's well-read. It's not because he's been told things or had trainers like Garry Kasparov. Those things — like working with Kasparov when young — help too, but he knows all the classics, definitely. But that's because he's been reading books since he was nine and because he remembers it.' For Henrik, his young son's ability to read was not extraordinary as his extended family had plenty of engineers and people in fields like math. So reading was always something that was natural. Even now, Henrik sometimes gets taken aback by his son's capacity for knowledge. He says a few years back, Magnus participated in a quiz in Reykjavik where he ended up winning. 'I was surprised that he had won. And he just said, 'Of course we won. I know my chess history. We should have won by a bigger margin,'' grins Carlsen senior. Young players enamoured by Carlsen's success on the 64 squares would do well to take a leaf out of Carlsen's book. Amit Kamath is Assistant Editor at The Indian Express and is based in Mumbai. ... Read More
Indian Express
26-05-2025
- Sport
- Indian Express
Before Magnus Carlsen, Norway had Simen Agdestein who played Kasparov, Anand in chess and battled Maldini on football pitch
Here's a pop quiz question for chess fans: name a chess player from Norway who became the youngest grandmaster in the world in his era? Here's a hint to make the question a tad easier: he was also Norway's first grandmaster. If your answer starts with the name Magnus, you would be mistaken. Meet Simen Agdestein, Norway's first grandmaster, who went on to become Magnus Carlsen's first real trainer, but not before he had brawled with world champions like Viswanathan Anand, Garry Kasparov and Boris Spassky on the chessboard, and evaded tackles on the football pitch from legendary Italian defenders like Paolo Maldini and Franco Baresi. Agdestein is a rarity having played two sports at the elite level. He tried to straddle both sporting worlds that made heavy, yet completely contrasting, demands: one sport demanded stillness, another required constant movement. He was the Norwegian national chess champion at the age of 15, an International Master at 16, played for the Norwegian Under-17 football team that same year, became the world's youngest grandmaster of that era aged 18 without ever hiring a professional chess trainer, served a year in the military (where he primarily only played chess) at 20, before making his debut for the Norwegian senior football team at 22. For good measure, he won his 9th Norwegian national championship in 2023. In the meantime, he guided a young Carlsen's rise towards greatness. 'Playing chess was very half-hearted back then,' Agdestein tells The Indian Express. 'I tried to kind of continue playing a tournament here and there, just to satisfy the pressure from the other side. My focus was more on football, but I still became the Nordic champion. I was number 16 in the world at my peak.' Half-hearted or not, there are still aspects of his chess career that spark pride in his voice. 'I'm still the youngest (Norwegian national champion), a little bit younger than Magnus,' says Agdestein, who worked with a young Carlsen at the Norges Toppidrettsgymnas (The Norwegian College for Elite Athletes). He remembers those sessions fondly. 'I wanted to kind of pass everything I've learned to him. He was very little, just 10 years old. Our sessions usually lasted three hours with no stops. Three hours using no computers, just analysing games, maybe three games in each session,' he recalls. Potential unrealised Kasparov once called Agdestein the 'world's strongest amateur', words that bring a smile to his face. But he doesn't consider becoming the world's youngest grandmaster in that era a big deal, even though he did that without any real coaching. ''I was very immature. It's important what kind of people you have around you at that age. I was very young and when all kinds of invitations came, it was stressful. It would have been nice to have some competent advice,' he says ruefully. Agdestein plucks out two memories to illustrate how a coach can make or break a player – with just a whispered sentence. During the time he was playing football, one of his coaches informed him that some scouts from a big club had come to have a look at him. That piled on needless pressure on him and he couldn't do well in that game. Then, a few years later, when he was playing for a club called Lyn, he and his teammates were watching a Norway game on TV. When a striker scored, all the players hooted and howled, but his coach at the club Egil Olsen just leaned in and whispered: 'You could also have done that.' 'It was just a small thing. But it made me think,' Agdestein says. A few years later, he was in the Norwegian football team and also scored a goal for his country. But on the chessboard, there was no one to whisper in his ear and alter his career's trajectory. And so, at some stage, he walked away from the sport — into the warm embrace of his first love, football — because playing the sport of 64 squares was too lonely. He says he wanted to have a 'social life' and chess, he points out, can be too lonesome a pursuit. Agdestein played eight matches for the Norwegian football team sharing the pitch with many of the stars from the Scandinavian nation's golden generation which had defeated the mighty Brazilians at the 1998 FIFA World Cup. At his peak, he had offers from Norwegian first division clubs, and even from a club in Turkey. But an ACL injury ended his career prematurely. 'When I was on the national team. I had offers from everywhere. Then I broke my knee. After that, it was just a catastrophe,' Agdestein recalls. Guiding light That was when he returned to chess, playing in elite events like Norway Chess (he also later commentated at the tournament). His coaching philosophy is very simple: 'If someone has the talent, it's so very often just about not destroying it,' he says. 'I had a good talent, I feel. But there were people around me, I felt in hindsight, who were trying to destroy it.' And just like his football career was shaped by the carefully whispered words of a coach, Agdestein helped Carlsen. Till date, the world no.1 and five-time champion states that the best advice he has got in his career came from Agdestein. 'He played a line in the Sicilian three times. And then he knew it very well. I told him it was time to stop playing that line because there's a lot of new things to learn. Other players learn something well and just play the same thing over and over,' says Agdestein. 'I was a little bit arrogant in my playing days. I used to say that if I tried half as much as the others, I would be twice as good as them,' he says before continuing: 'At that time, there was nothing wrong with my confidence. I felt I had no limits. That's also the kind of idea I tried to pass on to Magnus when he appeared. There were no limits (for him as well). It is possible to become the very best. I thought that too for myself. Everything I see in Magnus is just the best version of myself.' (The writer is in Stavanger at the invitation of Norway Chess) Amit Kamath is Assistant Editor at The Indian Express and is based in Mumbai. ... Read More
