Andrew Soltis - Magnus Carlsen: 60 Memorable Games

Andrew Soltis

As 2020 began Magnus Carlsen celebrated ten straight years as the worlds highest rated player. He held three world championship titles, in blitz, rapid and classical chess, an unprecedented achievement. Within days of the new year he broke the record for playing more than 107 straight games without a loss.

The term super-tournament has no precise meaning. But it has come to mean a round robin with classical time controls, in which each player is an elite grandmaster. In recent years the Sinquefield Cup, Norway Chess, Wijk aan Zee and the Gashimov Memorial have become synonymous with super-tournament.

Bobby Fischer never won a super-tournament. Garry Kasparov won outright or tied for first place in 35 super-tournaments in his nearly-30-year career. His fans said this was further evidence that he was the greatest player in chess history.

But Magnus Carlsen won some 40 super-tournaments, plus another 14 super speed tournaments before he was 30.

What makes Carlsen different? is a good question. But a better one is: How did he make himself different?

The simplest answer is that he played an extraordinary amount of chess and did it long before he was a master. One on-line database, Chessgames.com, contains 1,000 games he played before he was 17.

In contrast, Kasparov played his 1,000th game when he was 27 and had already been world champion for five years, according to the same source.

Of course, large numbers of games, even of a famous player, are typically missing from databases, especially in their early years. But the 1,000th game of Fabiano Caruana preserved by Chessgames.com came after he had been competing in tournaments for 16 years. Carlsen did it in half that time.

Playing a lot doesnt necessarily teach. What did Carlsen learn from so much chess?

Perhaps the most important is the ability to judge which positions are easier to play than others.

Carlsen Vasily Ivanchuk

Sao Paolo 2011

Nimzo-Indian, Three Knights Variation (E21)

1 d4 f6 2 c4 e6 3 c3 b4 4 f3 b6 5 c2 b7 6 a3 xc3+ 7 xc3 e4 8 c2 f5 9 g3 f6 10 h3 0-0 11 0-0 a5 12 d1 e8 13 d5 a6 14 f4 exd5 15 xf5 dxc4 16 g5! h5 17 xd7! h8 18 e7? d5 19 g4 g6 20 f7+ g8 21 f5 xf5 22 xf5 xe7 23 h6+ gxh6 24 g4+ g6 25 xh6

Carlsen missed opportunities to put the game away earlier (18 ad1! xd7 19 xd7, for example).

His comment here is revealing: White certainly has the easier game.

That is, it is easier to find good moves for White than it is for Black. And it is easier for Black to err than for White.

This was borne out by the rest of the game: 25...f7 26 d1 e8 27 h4! c5 28 h5 c8 29 xc4 e5 30 h4 c6? (30...e6!) 31 d5! e6 32 c4 cd8? 33 g4+ g7 34 xc8 Resigns.

Now you might say: So what? Carlsen wasnt trying to evaluate the position in the diagram. He was just stating a personal opinion.

Oh, but he was evaluating the position. He was judging it in terms of playability. That is not a precise concept. There is no metric to quantify it and computers cannot appreciate it. But in real-life situations, playability is as valid as more familiar ways of evaluating a position, such as piece mobility or pawn structure.

Over and over in Carlsens notes to his games he said the move he chose was the one that lead to an easier position, the more pleasant game, a more comfortable one. Playability was a crucial factor for him in deciding whether to take an irrevocable step, such as sacrificing a pawn or the Exchange.

Karjakin Carlsen

World Championship match, 3rd playoff game, New York 2016

White has just played 30 a3. Computers recommend 30...d8, 30...b8, 30...c8 and 30...h4. But they cant find a significant advantage after any of these moves.

Carlsen chose 30...e4. It forced a trade of bishops, allowed him to maintain his knight on e3 and opened the dominating square e5 to his queen.

Some engines say his winning chances declined, slightly or to a large degree, after 31 dxe4 xc3 32 xc3 e5.

But grandmasters around the world who followed the game on-line smiled when they saw 30...e4!. They knew that it was exactly the kind of move you should play in such a position. Regardless of what machines say, Blacks winning chances were soaring. The position was simply much easier for him to play.

They were right, as Game 47 shows. If there is any single Magnus move that saved the world championship title he first earned in 2013, it was 30...e4!.

What else did his early tournament experience teach Carlsen? An answer is remarkable versatility.

Every great player has his kind of positions, the ones he knows best from past experience. But every great player, and this includes world champions, has other positions that he does not know as well and consequently plays less well.

Very early in his career Carlsen amassed an extraordinary amount of experience in virtually every opening, every pawn structure and every endgame.

Versatility is not just a feature of his play, according to Vishy Anand. It is his main strength. Magnus is capable of being many different players, Anand told the New Yorker magazine. He can be tactical. He can be positional.

In another interview Anand was asked to compare Carlsen with an earlier paragon of versatility, Anatoly Karpov. Anand knew them both. He had played nearly 100 games with Karpov and well over 100 with Carlsen. I think Carlsens much more universal, Anand said. There havent been many such players at all, perhaps Spassky in his best years.

Like almost every 1 e4 player, Carlsen learned how to play the Ruy Lopez. But he also played the Ponziani Opening, the Bishops Opening and the Vienna Gambit as well as the exotics such as 1 e4 e5 2 f3 c6 3 d3, the Four Knights Game with 4 a3, the Kings Gambit Accepted with 3 c3 and even 1 e4 e5 2 h5 (in rapids and blitz).

As Black he defended the Ruy Lopez, as do most of the world-class players of the last half century. But he also adopted the Philidors Defense and brought 1 e4 e5 2 f3 c6 3 b5 b4!? out of mothballs. He used oddities against top-notch opponents, such as meeting Vladimir Kramniks 1 e4 e5 2 f3 c6 3 c4 f6 4 d3 with 4...e7 5 c3 a5. In the 2019 Norway Chess (blitz) tournament he defeated Caruana with 1 e4 g6 2 d4 f6 3 e5 h5.

Of course, there have always been strong grandmasters who varied their openings. But Carlsen weaponized his versatility. It was a huge asset when playing rivals who spent enormous amounts of time preparing to play him.

Most elite grandmasters are obsessed with openings. Hikaru Nakamura spends about 80 percent of his study time preparing his first moves for future opponents. He spends another 10 percent reviewing his games and the final 10 percent on endgames, he said on Reddit.com in 2014.

But preparing for Magnus is almost impossible. Since he and Nakamura first met over the board in 2006, Carlsen defended against his 1 d4 with the Kings Indian, Nimzo-Indian, Grnfeld, Bogo-Indian and Queens Indian Defenses and the Slav and various other versions of the Queens Gambit Declined.