Magnus Carlsen is undoubtedly the greatest chess player of all time. His numerous successes in the game from an early age have helped him become one of the highest-earning chess players of all time. But more importantly, his demographic appeal, charismatic personality and genius-level intelligence have contributed to the net worth of Magnus Carlsen in the form of brand endorsements and his corporate push.
Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen was born on 30 November 1990 in Tønsberg, Norway, to Sigrun Øen and Henrik Albert Carlsen. He showed tremendous potential as a genius from an early age. His father taught him to play chess at five.
His exceptional memory helped him quickly compute multiple combinations of moves on the board. As a result, he began playing professional tournaments at the age of eight.
Throughout his career, Carlsen has five World Champion titles, four World Rapid Championships and six World Blitz Championships to his name. These three are the most prominent chess championships and are held by the game’s governing body, Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE), or International Chess Federation.
He is the reigning champion in Rapid and Blitz formats and holds the record for the highest number of championship wins in the two.
TIME magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in April 2013 and the UK edition of Cosmopolitan included him among its Sexiest Men list the same year.
“I had the opportunity to train Carlsen in 2009, and his intuitive style conserves the mystique of chess at a time when every CPU-enhanced fan thinks the game is easy. Carlsen is as charismatic and independent as he is talented,” wrote Russian chess great Garry Kasparov for Carlsen in the latter’s profile for TIME.
In a prescient observation, Kasparov noted, “If he can rekindle the world’s fascination with the royal game, we will soon be living in the Carlsen Era.”
Magnus Carlsen: The style of his play
Magnus Carlsen’s playing style has been compared to that of some of the greatest chess players of all time, such as Karpov, Kasparov and the late American chess great Bobby Fischer. He is also a unique player in his own right and has a combination of strengths that makes him one of the most difficult players to beat in the world.
While his playing style is particularly characterised by its versatility and adaptability, it also includes flexibility. Carlsen can adapt his play to suit his opponent and his position on the board. He is not afraid to change his plans, if necessary, and is always looking for new and creative ways to win.
Chess technically has three phases: opening, middle-game and endgame. Carlsen is comfortable in all three phases and can play each in various ways.
In the opening, Carlsen is known for his wide and varied repertoire. He avoids specialising in any particular opening, as this would make it easier for his opponents to prepare against him. Instead, he prefers to mix things up and keep his opponents guessing.
One of Carlsen’s strengths in the opening is his ability to get good positions out of bad openings. He can calculate long and complicated variations while looking for new and creative ways to open the game. It has been observed that if he makes a mistake in the opening, he usually finds a way to recover and get back in a playable — sometimes stronger — position.
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Carlsen is a master of positional play in middle-game. He can create small advantages over his opponents and gradually convert them into wins. He is also a skilled tactician and is always on the lookout for opportunities to attack his opponents’ weaknesses.
What distinguishes Carlsen from other grandmasters is how he executes the endgame. In fact, the Norwegian is known for being one of the greatest chess players in history when it comes to his endgame. He has an in-depth understanding of endgame theory and can convert even the most difficult of endings into wins. His opponents are often left dumbstruck by the blitzkrieg tactics he deploys during the endgame with a precision that demolishes the opposing strategy on the board. This is most visible in the blitz games he plays, which require exceptional endgame expertise.
One of the most notable aspects of Carlsen’s playing style is his composure under pressure. He can maintain his focus and concentration even in the most tense and difficult of situations. This is one of the things that makes him so difficult to beat.
The ‘Carlsen Era’
Magnus Carlsen’s rise to global fame began with his first tournament victory in January 2004 at Wijk aan Zee in the Netherlands. It led American chess player Lubomir Kavalek to dub him the “Mozart of chess.”
Two months later, he defeated former world champion, the Russian legend Anatoly Karpov, at a blitz tournament in Reykjavík, Iceland. He also drew a game against Kasparov.
After finishing in second place at the Dubai Open Chess Championship in April 2004, he was named Grandmaster. At the time, Carlsen was 13 years old.
World Championship reign
Magnus Carlsen won his first FIDE World Championship in 2013, defeating the then-reigning champion Viswanathan Anand, the legendary Indian grandmaster, in a 12-game match held in Chennai, India. He was only 22 years old at the time, and therefore, was the second-youngest world champion (after Kasparov).
His first defence of the title came the following year when he met Anand in a rematch at the 2014 World Championship in Sochi, Russia. Carlsen again displayed his formidable arsenal of moves to win with a score of 6.5-4.5.
At the 2016 World Championship, held in New York City, Carlsen met Russian grandmaster Sergey Karjakin for his third title defence. The game was closely contested and Carlsen managed to win with a tiebreaker in rapid chess games, securing a 9-7 victory.
His most challenging opponent at the top level to date has been American grandmaster Fabiano Caruana. The two met at the 2018 World Championship in London. They played 12 classical games, but it led to a tie of 6-6. This warranted a series of rapid and blitz tiebreakers, which Carlsen won 3-0 to retain his title.
Carlsen went up against Russian grandmaster Ian Nepomniachtchi at the 2020 World Championship, which was played in 2021 because of the pandemic delay. The two met in Dubai where Carlsen easily dispatched his opponent with a score of 7.5-3.5.
In 2022, Carlsen announced he would not compete in the World Championships in the future.
“I feel I don’t have a lot to gain, I don’t particularly like [the championship matches], and although I’m sure a match would be interesting for historical reasons and all of that, I don’t have any inclination to play and I will simply not play the match,” he said on The Magnus Effect, the podcast of his sponsor, in July 2022.
Following his public announcement, FIDE President Arkady Dvorkovich said in a statement that the governing body had tried to convince Carlsen and address his concerns earlier in May but could not “change his mind.”
“His decision not to defend his title is undoubtedly a disappointment for the fans, and bad news for the spectacle. It leaves a big void. But chess is now stronger than ever – in part, thanks to Magnus – and the World Championship Match, one of the longest and most respected traditions in the world of sports, will go on,” Dvorkovich added.
The decision led to the abdication of his title, meaning that he went out unbeaten.
In his absence, the title was up for grabs in the 2023 edition in Astana, Kazakhstan. World No. 2 Ian Nepomniachtchi and World No. 3 Ding Liren competed, with the latter winning it to become the 17th world champion and the first Chinese male chess player to do so.
Yet, it was anyone’s observation that the competition was of little significance without Carlsen. One of the most prominent names who openly said it was Kasparov, who, ahead of the event in an interview with the Saint Louis Chess Club in March, downplayed the significance of the match between Nepomniachtchi and Ding, saying, “It’s a pity Magnus is not there and, naturally, the match between Nepo and Ding is a great show anyway, but it’s not a World Championship match.”
FIDE World Rapid & Blitz titles held by Magnus Carlsen
FIDE has been holding a combined World Rapid & Blitz Championships since 2012, after organising both tournaments separately for years prior. As such, players can compete in both tournaments at the same time in the same host city.
Rapid is 15 minutes per player for the entire game, plus a 10 seconds per move increment. Blitz, on the other hand, is three minutes per player per game with a two seconds per move increment.
Magnus Carlsen won his first FIDE World Blitz Championship in 2009 in Moscow, before the tournament was held in conjunction with the World Rapid event. He won the event with 31.0 points from 42 games in the round-robin format. His points were three more than World Champion Viswanathan Anand, who came second, and six points ahead of third-placed Sergey Karjakin. At the time, Carlsen was only 18 years old.
Carlsen made history in 2014, two years after the two events were combined by FIDE when he won both the World Rapid and World Blitz championships in Dubai. Since he was the reigning World Champion in the regular format, it made him the first player to hold the three major FIDE world titles at the same time.
He repeated the triple crown feat two times more, once in 2019 with his win in both World Rapid and World Blitz in Moscow and again in 2022 in Almaty. Carlsen is the only player in chess history to hold all three titles at the same time, and he did that three times over.
Besides the triple crown victories, he also won the World Rapid title in Berlin in 2015. He won the World Blitz Championship in Riyadh in 2017 and in Saint Petersburg in 2018. His consecutive three victories in the World Blitz championships between 2017 and 2019 make him the only player with three consecutive wins in the tournament.
Since he will continue to participate in the FIDE World Rapid & Blitz Championships, he is the reigning champion in both.
Magnus Carlsen finally wins the Chess World Cup
Until August 2023, the only major chess tournament missing from Magnus Carlsen’s illustrious cabinet of victories was the World Cup of chess.
Officially known as the FIDE World Cup, Carlsen finally won it in Baku, Azerbaijan, when he defeated Indian grandmaster Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa in an epic encounter that made headlines around the world for the intelligent tactics deployed by both players throughout the tournament.
Praggnanandhaa has turned out to be one of Carlsen’s most formidable younger opponents in recent years. The two players have had 21 face-offs, with Carlsen leading Praggnanandhaa 8 to 5. The rest ended in draws.
The first two games, played in the classical format, in the finals of the 2023 FIDE World Cup between Carlsen and Praggnanandhaa ended in draws. It was after this that Carlsen showed his remarkable composure under pressure in the rapid game to defeat Praggnanandhaa and lift his maiden World Cup.
Carlsen had previously tried to win the World Cup multiple times. In fact, he played in two tournaments before he became a world champion. The first was in 2005 at Khanty-Mansiysk in Russia, where he finished 10th. The second was in 2007 in the same city. He was only 17 years old at the time and finished in third place after losing to the eventual winner, Soviet-bon American grandmaster Gata Kamsky, in the semi-finals.
Carlsen had also attempted to win the World Cup in the years after becoming the World Champion, but the closest he could come before eventually winning it was in 2021 when he again finished third place after losing to Duda.
FIDE World No.1 and Elo rating record
In the five years after becoming a grandmaster in 2004, Carlsen amassed numerous tournament victories and kept climbing through the FIDE ranks. The governing body announced in January 2010 that Carlsen was the new World No.1. At the time, he was 19 years old and, therefore, the youngest player to reach the top rank.
The rank kept shuttling between Carlsen and Anand till July 2011, when the Norwegian regained it. Carlsen has since remained the FIDE World No.1 and currently holds the second-longest streak at the top spot after Kasparov.
He is also a record holder in the Elo rating system, a metric named after Hungarian-American physics professor Arpad Elo, which calculates the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games.
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Elo ratings keep changing for every player throughout their career depending on their performance and are different across the three main formats of chess: standard (classical), rapid and blitz, the last two of which are time-controlled games.
Carlsen reached his peak Elo rating of 2882 twice, in May 2014 and then in August 2019. No other chess player in history has ever reached Carlsen’s Elo rating, which is over 31 points more than that of second-placed Kasparov’s peak Elo rating of 2851.
As of October 2023, his Elo rating is 2839 in the standard game, 2818 in rapid, and 2887 in blitz.
Longest undefeated streak and overall win-loss record
Magnus Carlsen holds the Guinness World Record for the longest undefeated streak in chess.
From 2018 to 2020, the Norwegian genius did not lose 125 consecutive games that he played across tournaments. Of them, 42 were wins and 83 were draws.
No chess player in history has ever gone anywhere close to his streak, which, in the eyes of some observers, technically means that Carlsen is the greatest chess player of all time.
The streak ended in October 2020 when he was defeated by Polish grandmaster Jan-Krzysztof Duda in round five of the Norway Chess tournament. At the time, Duda was world No.15.
FIDE data shows that he has won 799, lost 200 and drawn 847 games in his career. The data reveals that he has a higher percentage of wins when playing with white. Across the three formats, he has the highest percentage of wins in blitz (proof of his endgame expertise), whether playing with white or black, and the lowest in classical when playing with black.
Net worth of Magnus Carlsen and his earnings
There is no confirmation on how much exactly is the net worth of Magnus Carlsen. Some reports put that figure at USD 25 million, others estimate it to be around USD 50 million. Whatever his net worth, Carlsen’s wealth has three primary sources: his company Play Magnus AS (or Play Magnus Group), his brand endorsements and his earnings from chess.
Play Magnus Group and Offerspill Sjakklubb
In October 2013, Carlsen co-founded the Play Magnus AS with his manager Anders Brandt and investor Espen Adgestein. According to Forbes, he invested just USD 13,000 for a 60 per cent stake in the company.
In 2020, the company was listed on the Merkur Market of the Oslo Stock Exchange with a valuation that settled at USD 100 million. This, according to Forbes, made Carlsen’s share worth USD 12 million at the time.
According to a November 2021 report by The New York Times (NYT), the market capitalisation of the company was USD 115 million at the time. The report also threw more light on Carlsen’s stake in it. It said that the chess great’s parents, Henrik and Sigrun, founded a company named Magnus Chess in 2016 to help their son become financially independent by the age of 25 in case he decided to stop playing.
Magnus Chess held about 9.5 per cent of Play Magnus Group. Carlsen’s share in Magnus Chess was about 85 per cent, which means that his equity stake was around USD 9 million in Play Magnus Group as of November 2021.
Play Magnus is behind the gaming app suite of the same name which as of October 2023 has over 5 million downloads across platforms for four different games.
Prominent brands that are part of Play Magnus Group include Chessable, Magnus Chess Academy, Chess24 and Champions Chess Tour.
In August 2022, it was announced that Play Magnus Group agreed to a takeover bid by Chess Growthco — the parent company of Chess.com — for around USD 83 million.
“It has been amazing to experience the growth of Play Magnus Group since 2013, and I would like to take the opportunity to thank the whole team for their efforts in developing the company and positively impacting the chess world,” Carlsen said in a statement at the time.
“Now we are entering a new era, and the combination of these two companies creates opportunities for the game of chess that no one has imagined before. I have great respect and admiration for Chess.com and what they have achieved. I look forward to begin working with the Chess.com team to create the best future for chess,” he added.
Following the deal, which was finalised in December 2022, Play Magnus Group became part of Chess.com. Carlsen became the brand ambassador of Chess.com in an agreement with the latter. As such, he is contracted to play in Chess.com events such as the Speed Chess Championship.
Carlsen founded Offerspill Sjakklubb (Offerspill Chess Club) in Norway in 2019.
The club has some of the world’s best chess players as members, including Carlsen, Praggnanandhaa, Raunak Sadhwani, Teja Vidic, Aryan Tari, Pranav Venkatesh, Eric Hansen, Christiansen Johan-Sebastian, Frode Olav Olsen Urkedal and Haldorsen Benjamin.
Praggnanandhaa’s coach, RB Ramesh, is the head coach at Carlsen’s club. Offerspill Chess Club won the 38th European Chess Club Cup in Durres, Albania, in October 2023.
Brand endorsements by Magnus Carlsen
Magnus Carlsen is credited with having made chess a far more popular sport than it ever was. The fact that no one before him created such a brand value around chess has been acknowledged by several mainstream media houses, sports observers and market watchers. He is active on social media, where he often shares posts showcasing his highly active lifestyle and interest in fitness, football and other arenas that might come across as the very opposite of the perception around chess players.
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Carlsen modelled for G-Star Raw’s Fall/Winter 2010 advertising campaign with Hollywood star Liv Tyler.
According to the NYT report, Carlsen has “several private sponsorship agreements, including with Unibet, a sports betting site; Isklar, a Norwegian water company; and Simonsen Vogt Wiig, a Norwegian law firm.”
Mastercard named him the global brand ambassador in September 2021. German sportswear brand Puma made its foray into the world of chess with a long-term partnership with Carlsen in February 2022.
In April 2022, Unibet’s parent, Kindred Group, signed a two-year extension of its partnership with Carlsen as well as its sponsorship of his club, Offerspill.
Prize money from the sport is the third major source of the overall net worth of Magnus Carlsen.
According to a January 2023 Chess.com report, Carlsen has earned the most in the form of prize money among all players in history.
He earned around USD 560,000 in major tournament prizes through 2022 alone. Chess.com revealed that including Champions Chess Tour (CCT), Norway Chess and both the FIDE World Rapid & Blitz Championships, Carlsen played just seven tournaments in 2022. By comparison, Filipino-American Grandmaster Wesley So, who was the second-highest earner of the year, made USD 541,632 from 14 tournaments.
At the time, the report placed Carlsen behind Vishwanathan Anand on the list of the highest earners in prize money in their career. Anand’s career total was around USD 9.46 million, which gave him the top spot, while Carlsen was at USD 9.43 million at the end of 2022.
When the Norwegian won the 2023 FIDE World Cup, he took home the prize money of USD 110,000. Thus, it can be concluded that Carlsen now officially leads the list of the highest-earning chess players in prize money in career.
A September 2021 report by Forbes revealed that Carlsen was the highest-earning e-sports player in the world in 2020. Playing under the username DrNykterstein on Chess24, Carlsen earned USD 510,587 throughout the year on the platform.
(Main image: Dean Mouhtaropoulos/ Getty Images; Featured image: Magnus Carlsen/@magnus_carlsen/Instagram)
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
– Who is the richest chess player?
The richest chess player in the world is Magnus Carlsen.
– Who is the richest grandmaster in chess?
The richest grandmaster in chess is Magnus Carlsen.
– Is Magnus Carlsen the best chess player of all time?
Experts around the world hold Magnus Carlsen as the greatest chess player of all time.