26-05-2025
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
