AI avalanche, favorite football team and how “I could never be caught cheating”

• The Norwegian grandmaster, who ended his first confrontation with Garry Kasparov with a draw at only 13 years old, takes an x-ray of his career, explains the impact that artificial intelligence has on chess, cheating in modern chess, but also what inspires him in his everyday life: golf, his passion for the NBA, but also how he wanted to become a footballer.

Carlsen recounts that there was no magic moment, as in American films, and that the meeting with the chess player was not disguised as love at first sight:

“My dad is a big chess fan, so he taught me quite early, I was about five years old, but I wasn't too interested then. I was more into LEGO, maths and sports statistics. Dad was a professional player and used to play with my sister. She was never competitive, unlike me. So the main motivation was that I really wanted to beat her. I wanted to beat my sister at anything. I was about 5 years old, but from there chess simply became my thing. Chess has always been a hobby for me. When it starts to feel like work, it gets harder.”

He obtained the title of grandmaster at only 13 years old, placing himself among the youngest worldwide to reach that stage: “Today's children reach similar levels earlier, because the training resources are different, the information flows differently. Now there's a kid from Argentina who they call the Messi of chess and who's going to be a grandmaster soon. I think he's only 10 years old. At a tournament in India I saw a 1600 rated little guy with a decent game. He's only 3 years old.”

There was no magic moment when I said I was the best. Everything was gradual. You have times when you play really well, you have times when you're not as good as people think. But when you see that you can consistently compete with the best, then you begin to understand that you are at their level or even above. It was more of a long road than a sudden revelation

Draw with Garry Kasparov at 13

In 2004, at Reykjavik Rapid, Magnus Carlsen, only 13 years old, met the great Gary Kasparov. Images from that game are still going around the world: a totally relaxed kid gives the impression of being bored while the great world champion is thinking of his next move. He has no mood in the chair, walks around to other tables, turns and moves immediately. That match ended in a draw.

Magnus even worked with Garry Kasparov, considered by many to be the greatest player in history. Although the coach-student relationship did not last very long, Carlsen admitted that the grandmaster provided him with essential insights. Working with Kasparov helped him improve his ability to understand dynamic and complex situations, which he previously simply avoided or played more passively.

When you become a world champion, everything changes around you. The world perceives you differently, every move is analyzed by millions of people. But that pressure doesn't come from the outside in the first place – it comes from within you. If you start thinking that every game is a matter of life and death, then you're stuck. I tried to treat everything as normal as possible, not to define myself only by titles

From that moment, the records began to flow in the chain: five-time world champion, five-time rapid world champion and reigning blitz world champion, Magnus Carlsen is one of the most important chess players in history.

In the sixth game of the world title match with Ian Nepomniachtchi in 2021, Carlsen won a game of 136 moves, the longest in the history of a classic World Championship, in a battle of over 7 hours.

People think that chess is only about intelligence. It's not really like that. You don't have to be the smartest person in the world to be good at chess. It's more about pattern recognition, about visual memory, about repeating situations until they become natural. The difference between very good and the best isn't just math – it's how you use what you know, how calm you stay and how much you can trust your intuition

“AI has changed everything. A phone is better than any grandmaster”

Chess does not escape the turning point that disturbs and at the same time incites humanity in recent times, namely artificial intelligence:

“I think for a very long time chess has been about how much you as a human can calculate and how much you can understand positionally. The moment the engines became so powerful, everything changed completely. Humans rely on intuition, we feel the positions, but AI doesn't feel anything, it calculates everything. It's much faster and more accurate than any player. Sometimes you see moves that people wouldn't have considered in the past and you realize that the game you already knew is not the same game anymore”, he explained the Norwegian.

Asked if he or any other grandmaster could beat an AI engine, the world champion bluntly replied: “No, no way. It's not even a discussion. A phone with a good engine plays better than the best gamer in the world. It's not modesty, it's reality. And I think the moment you accept that is a kind of important psychological threshold: chess is no longer about man versus machine. It's about people using the machine to get better against other people.”

“When the first really good engines came out it was just a lot of computation. Then neural networks came along and then we really had to re-examine almost every opening. You see lines that we thought were weak or impossible, and the AI shows you that they are relevant, sometimes very good. There are positions where ten years ago you would have said they were complete nonsense, and today the AI tells you why they are not. It took everything in a completely new direction. It changed the way we think about the game, not just how we are preparing it.”

“AI is not our enemy – it's our training partner”

“In reality, you're not fighting the AI. You're using it. For training, for checking ideas, for analysis. The best combination is always: human + AI. Humans come with creativity and intuition, AI confirms, corrects or suggests something else. For young players, this is normal. For my generation it was a transition. But if you want to stay on top now, you can't do it without AI. It's part of the game. E and why you see 8–10 year olds playing incredible. They are already growing up in a world where AI exists. They have access to perfect analysis, to ideas that older generations would never have discovered on their own. You learn faster, make less mistakes, see more. It's normal for the average level to increase enormously.”

The Niemann case: “I felt that things were not normal. They still do not seem normal to me. I do not speak without thinking twice”

With the advent of artificial intelligence comes a significant problem surrounding the sport – which has been disrupted since the advent of conventional computers anyway: cheating. Magnus Carlsen was at the center of a heated conflict that surrounded the planet when he accused the American chess player, Hans Niemann, of using outside methods to influence the game:

“I felt like things weren't normal. And I still don't feel normal. I don't talk about stuff like that without thinking twice. I made it clear that I didn't trust the situation and that a lot of people in the community felt the same way.” Carlsen explained on Joe Rogan's podcast that intuition and perception of the opponent's behavior is important, especially when it comes to unusual moves or unusual progress in the game.

Carlsen emphasized not the paranoia of accusing anyone, but the idea of ​​a code of honor and fair play in chess and the responsibility of top players to keep the sport clean:

“At the highest level, chess has a code of honor. When you enter a tournament, you submit not only to the 64 squares, but also to mutual trust. I know that it is technically possible to cheat, that a phone is better than any human, but there must be limits – moral and fair play limits. I said that I want a clean game, in which I trust the opponent. When you feel someone has crossed those lines – whether it's online or in situations that seem dubious – then the matter needs to be raised. But at the same time I can't say something without clear evidence. If I cheated, you wouldn't even know, because all I need is someone to help me with a key move, from the stands, with a sign, at an important moment. It's very hard to catch someone with evidence of cheating in high level chess. “

“I don't want to play with someone I think cheated”

At the 2022 Sinquefield Cup, Carlsen withdrew in protest at Niemann's inclusion in the competition, which he had serious doubts about:

“I said then, and I still say, if someone has cheated repeatedly, regardless of the circumstances, I don't want to play with that person. Not because I get angry like a child, but because different standards lead to a different game. That's not something to take lightly. If you've cheated in the past and no one has cleared that up, then frankly, it's hard for me to carry on as normal as if nothing happened. I choose to they emphasize fair play, decency and the fact that there must be clear rules for everyone.”

Failures hit you hard, especially when you're always considered the favorite. But honestly, you learn so much from them. Not immediately, not the next day. At first it hurts, then frustration comes, then you start to understand them. If you manage the times when you hit the wall, you become stronger than if you win all the time

Magnus Carlsen: “I would have liked to be a footballer”

Asked what he would have wanted to excel at if it hadn't been for chess, Magnus didn't hesitate: “I would have wanted to be a football player. I really like watching football. I also watch basketball. I watch NBA sequences every day to get some energy and idea, even if I'm not directly involved. When I wake up, I go for a walk, watch NBA highlights, then watch chess for 15 minutes or whatever he sent me the coach, and then I play. That's always been my training style.”

Carlsen follows the Premier League, and in 2020 he had a very good run in a Premier League fantasy game, ranking very high among millions of participants, which shows how concerned he is with modern football. Even so, the Norwegian is a Real Madrid fan. In fact, he also played football at an amateur club in Norway.

Looking at the dispute that has set the world of football on fire for more than a decade, Magnus cut it in another interview. Although his favorite player is Cristiano Ronaldo, the chess player always believed that Messi was better.

Magnus Carles about…

…daily routine: “I don't need to sit for 10 hours on theory. I walk, watch sports, do things that give me energy and then play.”

…mindset: “I'm not the Michael Jordan type – burn everything, obsessive. For me, the enjoyment of the game and that good energy works better.”

…blindfold chess (blindfold chess): “The blindfold shows how far a player's mind can go. It impresses everyone, but it's not about the circus – it's about mind control.”

…video games: “They can help mentally, but they can also be distracting. It depends on how you use them. Like anything “tool”, if you control it, it's useful.”

…golf: “I like it, I practice it. It relaxes me. It's competition, but in another form – it's good for balance.”

…physical condition: “Sleep and physical condition are extremely important. When you're tired, you don't think the same way. In chess you can see this immediately, sleep is elementary”