The Mozart of Chess, Magnus Carlsen
When people think about chess, the first name that comes to mind is Bobby Fischer, a renowned genius who demolished all Soviet Union chess players in 1972. He was first in America to earn the title of World Champion. At his peak, he was considered invincible in the world of chess.
After Fischer came Garry Kasparov, former world champion who people still think is the best chess player of all time. The trend seems to be that as time passes by, better chess players emerge. This might be obvious: advancements in technology inevitably make future generations more knowledgeable than the past. Even Kasparov himself admitted that the games he struggled at his peak can be easily analyzed by a teenager on the Internet.
When Kasparov retired in 2005, people were eager to know who the next conqueror of chess would be. Then came the current world champion, Magnus Carlsen, also known as the Mozart of Chess.
When Carlsen was just 13, he was able to play Kasparov to a draw. The same year, he became a grandmaster, the highest class chess has to offer. At this point, people already knew that he would become the next world champion, and they were right: Magnus became World Champion in November of 2013 at the age of 22.
To this day, Magnus shows an incredible dominance over top grand masters. The FIDE rating system is a system designed to rank players in competitive chess. A player is given a grand master title starting from a rating of 2500. Magnus’s classical FIDE rating is 2865, which is extremely higher than other top ranked players like Alireza Firouza, Liren Ding, and Fabiano Caruana who have ratings of 2804, 2799, and 2792.
Among grand masters, Magnus is considered a prodigy and generational talent. Hikaru Nakamura, who became grandmaster at the age of 15, says “when you’re playing against Magnus… you play normal moves, but then suddenly you’re in trouble. Suddenly you’re just worse.” Even grand masters like Nakamura admit that playing against Magnus is different from playing normal chess.
Magnus Carlsen is undoubtedly one of the few chess players who is ahead of their time. Gaps this wide between first place and second existed when Paul Morphy, Garry Kasparov, and Bobby Fischer were at their respective peaks. In this sense, Magnus Carlsen is up among these incredible historical geniuses in chess.
Then, is Carlsen really better than Fischer or Kasparov at chess? In terms of skills, Carlsen is superior. Nowadays, Kasparov is the one who fights for a draw against Magnus. However, let it be known that Kasparov and Fischer are from a totally different generation. Comparing these players and assigning who is best have no meaning. Some still say Fischer and Kasparov are better because they influenced chess more than Magnus did. Magnus may play more refined and modern chess, but he still aims to be as “great” as Kasparov.