Magnus Carlsen's Parents on Raising the World's Best Chess Player
The family of the unmatched chess prodigy gave him time to find his passion, but never went easy on him
By Alex Clark
June 26, 2014 2:26 p.m. ET
CHECK MATES | Magnus, at his office in Oslo, with his mother, Sigrun, and father, Henrik, a keen chess player himself who developed his son's skills at an early age by not playing down to his level. Photography by Colin Dodgson for WSJ. Magazine
HOW DO YOU SPOT a chess prodigy? Is there a moment—perhaps when he makes a boldly brilliant move out of nowhere or plasters his bedroom with pinups of Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov—when it all becomes clear?
Well, that wasn't quite how it happened for Henrik Carlsen and Sigrun Øen, parents of 23-year-old Magnus Carlsen, the Norwegian who became a grandmaster at 13 and the youngest-ever world No. 1 at 19, and whose peak World Chess Federation rating (2,882) is the highest in history. Last November, Carlsen defeated Viswanathan Anand to become the World Chess Champion, a title he will defend against Anand later this year in a yet-to-be-decided location—possibly Norway.
World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen gives a thoughtful interview about his life in chess...and then he beats WSJ's Jonathan Zalman in about thirty seconds.
Carlsen's route to chess took a little longer than his subsequent stellar progression might suggest. Henrik, 52, a keen chess player himself, remembers introducing the game to Magnus and his older sister, Ellen, now 25, when his son was turning 5. But after a month or two, Henrik says, "I gave up, basically, in the sense that we continued to play chess occasionally, but I didn't have any ambitions." He knew that legendary players such as Capablanca and Kasparov had understood the game—he clicks his fingers—"just like that." Magnus and his sister, he says, "learned the rules quickly, and they could capture a piece, but to get two or more pieces working together, which is what chess is about, this spatial vision took a long time."
At the time, Henrik reconciled himself to the fact that chess would simply be an enjoyable family pastime. "I felt, OK, they're definitely not geniuses, but it doesn't matter. Because, I mean, we loved our children. Chess was something we could do together, just a hobby, like playing cards or anything else." In the meantime, there were signs that Magnus had the aptitude and the determination to perform impressive mental feats. Sigrun, 51, recalls her son sitting for hours with puzzles or making advanced Lego models, patiently working his way through pages and pages of instructions meant for children a decade older. "He had the ability to sit for a very long time, even when he was small," she recalls.
This quality has contributed in no small measure to his success; chess commentators draw attention to his ability to wear down opponents, to wait patiently for them to make the tiniest mistake. Magnus himself maintains that he is an aggressive player but that audacity isn't always what's called for. "When you play against the best people in the world, they see through your plans, and you cannot win with a swashbuckling attack all the time," he says. "You just need to take what's there."
His parents are eager to point out that he wasn't an obviously faster learner than his sisters (he also has two younger siblings, Ingrid, 20, and Signe, 17) but that he kept on going, focusing his attention on a specific subject, such as car brands, until he knew it inside out. When I ask Magnus about his childhood proficiency, he replies simply: "I didn't particularly know if I was good at it or not; I just tried to do it."
“ "I felt, OK, they're definitely not geniuses, but it doesn't matter. Chess was something we could do together, just a hobby." ”
—–Henrik Carlsen
Then came a turning point. Just before Magnus turned 8, says Henrik, "Ellen suddenly understood enough to make it interesting for me to play with her." Magnus would sit to watch them and, a little later, join in. Henrik's dilemma was that if he adopted poor strategy, his children wouldn't learn anything, but he also didn't want them to become discouraged. So he began to play with limited resources—just his king and a pawn—slowly adding pieces as they learned the game. Magnus's interest started to grow, although Henrik maintains that "he just wanted to beat his sister." He had a competitive streak even as a small child? "Yes, absolutely," Sigrun says, "he still has that." More competitive than his sisters? "Absolutely." She laughs and gestures to her husband. "It's not from me, it's from him!"
Soon he was entering and very quickly winning tournaments. At home, during dinner, he began sitting apart from the family so he could study his chessboard while eating. "He was in the same room," remembers Sigrun, "so we could speak to him if we wanted to; he could hear what we were talking about if he wanted to join." Despite their unorthodox meals, they were, and remain, a close family.
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WHIZ KID | Magnus at 13, playing Belarus grandmaster Alexei Fedorov in 2004's Dubai Open Chess Championship. ©Anwar Mirza/Reuters/Corbis
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Competing in 2013's Sinquefield Cup ©Brian Cahn/Zuma Press/Corbis
There's a particular bond between father and son, forged through a mutual love of chess. When Magnus was 12, Henrik took a year's leave of absence from his job (he has spent recent years balancing his consultancy work in the oil industry with managing Magnus's affairs) and took the children out of school so they could travel together throughout Europe, an experience that Magnus remembers as "more useful than staying in school that year." Now, he says, he realizes that a certain family resemblance is developing. "I think I'm becoming more like my father in a way," he says, laughing. "I'm cracking the same lame jokes!" Many sons probably find themselves saying the same thing, but in the Carlsens' case, there's another dimension. "Whenever I lose," Magnus explains, "usually I want to be alone, figure it out. A couple of times I've lost and I've been complaining to my father about it, and he says, 'Just get up and stop whining.' I think that's the best advice I ever got."
Sigrun, an engineer like her husband, is not a chess player, although she's started to dabble with Play Magnus, an app that allows you to test your skills against the champion at various stages in his career. She describes herself as an introvert and dislikes the attention Magnus's celebrity has brought, particularly when people approach him in the street. This happens even more now that he is modeling for clothing company G-Star Raw, whose most recent ad campaign features him playing chess with the British model-actress Lily Cole. (Henrik remembers the reaction of Magnus's sisters when his career took a turn toward fashion modeling: "He got a lot of credit for that. They thought, OK, now you're getting somewhere!")
Although Sigrun insists that she's not starstruck by all the attention heaped on Magnus ("I really don't think so much about him as a world champion in chess," she says, "because he's my son"), she did have to work through an emotional barrier when he was 9 years old and starting to compete regularly. As she watched him play in a match, all Sigrun could see was a little boy who looked unhappy, hunched over a board as if he were struggling. Naturally, all she wanted to do was take him home. Afterward, she asked him if the contest had been painful for him. He looked at her with a blank, uncomprehending stare. No, he replied, he'd been having fun and was merely lost in thought. Now, says Sigrun, "I just want him to be happy. And as long as he's happy, he can do whatever he wants."
