Since the pandemic began, chess has undergone a renaissance and explosion in popularity, partially due to the attention the game received on streaming platforms. Over a millennium old, chess is finally fully entering and integrating itself within the modern age of content creation and live-streaming. Magnus Carlsen, one of the greatest chess players of all time, got a head start on this phenomenon when he created his YouTube channel in 2014. Not only has he grown his YouTube channel to over 1M subscribers, but he also founded his own company: Play Magnus. In 2022, Chess.com acquired the company and Magnus became an ambassador for the company as part of this.
No name is more quintessential to the modern game of chess than Magnus Carlsen. The Grandmaster and World Champion dominated chess from a young age and continued to develop his skills until he was cemented as one of the best players to ever touch the board. Fans flocked not only to his chess skills but his personality and his casual attitude towards chess events. But, who exactly is Magnus Carlsen? Here we’ll explain Carlsen’s upbringing, his chess career, and his adventure into the business and live-streaming world.
Who is Magnus Carlsen?
Magnus Carlsen is the top-ranked chess player worldwide per the FIDE world rankings and became a chess Grandmaster at 13 years of age, making him the youngest GM in the world at the time. He was born in Tønsberg, Norway to Sigrun Øen, a chemical engineer, and Henrik Albert Carlsen, an IT consultant. His family spent some time moving around Europe before settling down again in Norway, their home country.
His father was a passionate chess amateur and noticed Carlsen’s aptitude for logical problem-solving skills, as Carlsen was solving 500-piece jigsaw puzzles and assembling complicated LEGO sets at 2 years old. His father began teaching him chess when Carlsen was five years old. Although he showed little interest at the beginning of his chess journey, Carlsen admitted in an interview that he was mostly motivated to beat his sister at chess.
Carlsen began studying chess by himself for hours on end, playing himself and figuring out not only how to attack but also how to counter-attack and defend himself from himself. Eventually, he started getting coached by Norway’s top Grandmaster, Simen Agdestein. By the age of nine Carlsen had reached a rating of 1900 and by thirteen he was already an International Master. Now Carlsen is 32 years old and became the top-rated FIDE player over 12 years ago, a title he has never lost during his tenure.
In his free time, Magnus enjoys online poker, sport, and especially football. Not only someone who enjoys keeping their mind sharp, Magnus understands the importance of physical health. Magnus is a Real Madrid fan and is known to be a formidable fantasy football player.
Magnus Carlsen’s rating and net worth
Magnus Carlsen is a former five-time World Chess Champion, current four-time World Rapid Chess Champion, and six-time World Blitz Chess Champion. He has held the top ranking in the FIDE world chess rankings since July 2011. His peak rating of 2882 is the highest chess rating in the 1500-year history of the game.
As of August 2023, Magnus Carlsen’s ratings are 2835 in Classical, 2825 in Rapid, and 2887 in Blitz. In 2017, Carlsen’s Blitz rating fell just short of 3000: at 2986.
Magnus Carlsen earns a significant amount of money through tournament prize pools, his social media accounts, and various endorsements and sponsorships. He is currently estimated to be worth $50M~ USD.
Magnus Carlsen’s chess career
Magnus Carlsen’s chess career began to take off when he was 13 years old. The Norwegian had already experienced success and won many junior events locally but at a Blitz chess tournament in Iceland, he solidified himself as one of the great up-and-coming players of his generation. Magnus defeated former world champion Anatoly Karpov during the preliminary stage of the event and by the next day he was matched up against at-the-time top-rated player in the world, Garry Kasparov. Although Magnus surprised and impressed with a draw in the first game, he was still young and lost the second game against Kasparov. Nevertheless, the tournament was an important stop on his road to achieving the Grandmaster title.
Only a month later in Dubai, Magnus competed in the Open Chess Championship and obtained his third and final GM norm. At the age of 13, this made him the world’s youngest Grandmaster and the second-youngest Grandmaster in history, losing out to Sergey Karjakin who became a Grandmaster at 12 years of age. Carlsen went on to play in the FIDE World Chess Championship, becoming the youngest participant ever for the event, and challenged the Norwegian champion, Berge Østenstad, in the Norwegian Chess Championship. Carlsen ended up drawing his games against the champion, which left him without a Norwegian Championship.
At the age of 14, Carlsen was defeating and taking games off of some of the top-10 ranked chess players in the world. In the Norwegian Chess Championship, he once again finished in tied first place and had a chance to become the champion. This time he would face off against Simen Agdestein, his mentor since childhood. Magnus and Simen traded games back and forth, each winning games in turn before Agdestein won the championship title with a victory after three draws. Later that year he competed at the Chess World Cup and ended up finishing in 10th place, a result good enough to earn him a World Championship candidacy, again becoming the youngest person in history to achieve this.
A year later Carlsen would achieve his first Norwegian chess championship. However, he suffered a loss against Berge Østenstad at the end of the tournament, as in typical Magnus fashion he chased a victory instead of a safe draw that would have seen him win the event. Due to this loss, Carlsen tied for first with Agdestein again, and due to the delay until their playoff match could be scheduled, Magnus did not become the youngest Norwegian chess champion in history.
With his first national championship behind him, Carlsen began to pick up momentum and began rapidly winning tournaments and placing highly in major international events. At the age of 18, he achieved a rating of over 2800, becoming the youngest person in history to ever do so. A year later Carlsen was taking over the chess world. At the Nanjing Pearl Spring tournament, he was victorious in his category and even outscored at-the-time world’s highest-rated player, Topalov, finishing 2 and a half points ahead of him. Looking at his rating performance, it was one of the greatest results in chess history with a PR of 3002. Chess statisticians have declared this one of the best tournament performances in history.
Based on his average rankings and performances between mid-2009 and early 2010, Carlsen qualified for the Candidates Tournament, which determines the challenger to the current World Champion. Carlsen later announced he was withdrawing from the tournament, citing the event as unmodern and shallow for the number of ceaseless matches. Although he withdrew from the tournament, his ambitions were not sated. Later that year, it came to the public eye that Carlsen had recruited former World Champion and chess legend Garry Kasparov as his personal trainer.
One year later, Magnus continued to dominate events throughout the chess world, but he did not go undefeated nor win every tournament. Although he qualified for the 2011 Candidates Tournament, he once again withdrew from the tournament, citing the same issues with the World Champion cycle format. To highlight Magnus’ insane drive to improve and better himself, after a failure to defend his 2009 title at the World Blitz Championship 2010, Carlsen played a 40-game private match against friend and rival Hikaru Nakamura.
Between 2010 and 2012, Carlsen played a magnitude of tournaments and was consistently outperforming other Grandmasters and internationally recognised players. Although his gameplay was not as immaculate as it evolved to be, the foundation was there. By 2013 Magnus had slowed down on the tournaments, competing in fewer tournaments but using this time to hone his skills and develop his game. At the 2013 World Chess Championship, Carlsen finally managed to enter the tournament: as the highest-rated player in chess, he was directly invited and skipped the Candidates Tournament.
At the 2013 World Chess Championship, he played against Indian national Viswanathan Anand, winning his match by a considerably large 3 points margin. Although he was the challenger and less experienced than his opponent, he stayed calm and managed to capitalise on some of Anand’s mistakes during the event. Carlsen spent 10 years as a world champion before announcing in 2022 that he had no plans to defend his title. Carlsen explained on his podcast:
“The conclusion is very simple that I am not motivated to play another match. I simply feel that I don't have a lot to gain. I don't particularly like it, and although I'm sure a match would be interesting for historical reasons and all of that, I don't have any inclinations to play and I will simply not play the match.”
He went on to elaborate that his first title was the only one he felt truly motivated to win. He was unmotivated during the 2016 match, his third title, and said the fourth and fifth titles truly meant nothing to him. He reiterates that he is not retiring from chess, and may return to the World Chess Championship in the future, but with so many victories behind him, it is understandable to be tired and want to rest.
Although he may not have been motivated to continue defending his World Championship title, he was still prolific and ever-prevalent in the chess community. In 2017, Magnus competed in the Chess World Cup, which is highly unusual for a world champion as the tournament is part of the cycle to challenge the world champion. The following year he defended his World Blitz Chess Championship title, remaining undefeated at the event with a score of 17/21.
At the 2018 World Chess Championship Carlsen defeated American Fabiano Caruana after 12 draws in classical time control games. The two chess titans had to play rapid tiebreak games to decide a champion, and Magnus came out on top with three flawless victories. In 2019 Carlsen claimed the trophy for the World Rapid Chess Championship with an undefeated record. With no break between tournaments, Magnus continued to the World Blitz Chess Championship, where he defeated Hikaru Nakamura in a tiebreak match.
As the pandemic began in 2020, Carlsen organised a Magnus Carlsen Invitational event, partnered with Chess24. Advertised as the first professional online chess tournament and featuring a $250,000 USD prize pool, Carlsen went on to win his own event. Later that year his unbeaten streak in classical chess came to an end at the hand of Jan-Krzysztof Duda. Carlsen was undefeated for 125 games over a period of two years. Despite the end of the streak, Carlsen went on to win the event.
In 2022 Carlsen participated in the 2022 Sinquefield Cup and found himself matched up against the American Hans Niemann. After losing to Niemann, which ended a 53-game unbeaten streak, he withdrew from the event and stoked the flames, tweeting the famous video of José Mourinho saying, "I prefer really not to speak. If I speak, I am in big trouble.". Two weeks later Carlsen faced against Niemann in another event and resigned after one move. Later that year Carlsen officially accused Niemann of cheating.
Niemann admitted to cheating in online chess when younger in the past, but Carlsen released a rebuttal statement, announcing he believes Niemann cheated more often and more recently than he admitted. Chess.com removed Niemann from the platform shortly after and later released a report summarising their evaluation that Niemann cheated in over 100 games between 2015 and 2020. Niemann launched a lawsuit against Carlsen and others for defamation, but the case was dismissed in 2023.
Business and content endeavours
In 2013 Magnus co-founded the Play Magnus company, owning 60% of the company. They began developing the Play Magnus app, a mobile chess app which allowed players to compete against a chess engine modelled directly after a database of Carlsen’s games from the age of five onwards. Players can choose from 30 different skill levels, reflecting Magnus’ chess ability at different ages. In roughly four years the app received 2.8M downloads.
Play Magnus continued developing apps, eventually releasing Magnus Trainer, a chess training app, and Magnus’ Kingdom of Chess, a game targeted at young children. By 2019 the Play Magnus company had caught the eye of chess website chess24, and during that year the company offered Play Magnus a merger: becoming the Play Magnus Group.
Play Magnus Group was listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange in 2020 and the company was valued shortly after at 85M+ USD. Due to the merger, the Magnus Chess entity, which is owned by Carlsen’s family, owned less than 10% of the company. Come 2022, Chess.com offered an acquisition of the Play Magnus Group for $80M USD, which was accepted. In association with this acquisition, Carlsen became a Chess.com ambassador, meaning he would regularly appear in Chess.com events.
While all this was happening, Magnus was also developing his YouTube and other social media accounts. During his tenure with the Play Magnus Group, Carlsen launched several Chessable courses and chess24 videos, which were well received. Since launching his YouTube channel in 2014, Carlsen has built up a library of over 500 videos and cultivated an audience of 1M subscribers.
Originally, Carlsen would post vlogs and educational content to his channel, but nowadays he focuses more on tournament highlights: both for chess and poker events. Carlsen also utilises his YouTube channel to co-stream various chess events in which he is participating. Carlsen’s channel remains one of the most popular ways for fans to view chess tournaments, and at the recent Aimchess Rapid 2023 event he was the second-most popular channel of the event per peak concurrent viewers.
Looking at the statistics we've collected for Magnus' YouTube Live channel, he ranks as the 14th most-watched chess channel on YouTube Live for the first half of 2023. Especially impressive for the chess GOAT, as he only went live for an average of 24 hours a month throughout the half of the year. During this time he managed to amass 215.6K hours of watch time from his adoring fans and drew in an average of 1.4K viewers throughout all his streams.
Magnus also reached the milestone of 1M subscribers on the platform this year, making the jump from 800,000 at the start of the year. Magnus' audience is clearly there for him, and if he decides to dive deeper into streaming and content creation as his main focus it's clear that he has an audience waiting and ready to be cultivated.
Carlsen’s decision to step away from events like the World Chess Championship highlights how his relationship with the sport has evolved. Carlsen has done it all, won events time and time again and proved himself as the top-rated player of all time. Carlsen himself was quoted saying he finds classical chess boring, as it involves too much theory and counter-planning against your opponent. He still competes in chess events with a shorter timelimit, allowing him to showcase his amazing improvisational brain.
Carlsen has distanced himself from the world of elite chess, but on his own terms and as a champion. As he continues to develop his media mogul skills, we may even see Carlsen change into a full-time streamer and content creator. His Twitch channel, maskenissen, lets viewers have a look at how Magnus is when at home, enjoying games of chess with some drinks. His laid-back and casual demeanour when playing makes for perfect content and the decision for Carlsen to move into content creation full time may not be as far down the road as we think.
