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Magnus Carlsen: The GOAT

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He could solve fifty-piece jigsaw puzzles at age two. By five he had memorized the flags and capitals of every country in the world. By thirteen he was a Grandmaster. By twenty-two he was World Champion. And for ten years, nobody could stop him. Magnus Carlsen did not just dominate chess. He made it look like the rest of the world was playing a different game. Born in Tønsberg — A Mind Like No Other Sven Magnus Øen Carlsen was born on November 30, 1990, in Tønsberg, Norway. His parents, Sigrun Øen and Henrik Albert Carlsen, are both engineers. His father introduced him to chess at age five — but the young Magnus showed little interest at first. He was more curious about football, geography, and Lego sets. What drew him back to chess at age eight was simple: he wanted to beat his sister. He started studying chess books to do it. The competitive instinct that would define his entire career was present from the very beginning — not love of the game for its own sake, but the burning need ...
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Viswanathan Anand: From Chennai to the Top of the Chess World

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  The World Chess Championship had been dominated by Europeans and Americans since its very first match in 1886. Then came a boy from Chennai who played so fast the other players used to joke: "Has Anand finished yet?" He didn't just win the World Championship. He permanently ended chess's old world order. Born in Madras — The Lightning Kid Viswanathan Anand was born on December 11, 1969, in Mayiladuthurai, Tamil Nadu, India, into a Tamil Brahmin family. His father Krishnamurthy was a retired General Manager of Southern Railways. His mother Sushila — herself a chess enthusiast — taught him the game at the age of six. He had an older brother and sister, both more than a decade his senior. The youngest child, the quiet one, the one who had chess sets where other children had toys. As Paul van der Sterren writes in Kings of the Chessboard: "At the time, India had no chess culture to speak of. Fifty years on it is a great chess nation with many tournaments and top pl...
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Vladimir Kramnik: World Chess Champion, and the Shadow He Left Behind

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He was Kasparov's student, then Kasparov's second, then Kasparov's nemesis. He ended the longest reign in modern chess history with a weapon nobody saw coming — and did it so cleanly that Kasparov never won a single game. Vladimir Kramnik was not the most spectacular World Champion. He may have been the most complete. Born at the Right Time Vladimir Borisovich Kramnik was born on June 25, 1975, in Tuapse — a port city on the Black Sea coast of Russia. As Paul van der Sterren wrote in Kings of the Chessboard: "Kramnik was born at exactly the right time to both take full advantage of the unique Soviet coaching system for young chess players and then to profit from the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Borders opened and there was no one to stop him from playing as much as he liked." This combination — the rigorous Soviet training system of his childhood, followed by the freedom to compete everywhere as the USSR collapsed — gave Kramnik something no previous genera...
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