Who is magnus

On the sixty-second move, more than six hours after the game started, Kramnik erred. The computer programs still favored Kramnik, but they do not take into account momentum and fatigue; complex endgames confuse them. Kasparov, who had just arrived at the tournament, looked at the game on a large screen in the V. Eight moves later, Kramnik had a chance to make a move that would soon lead to checkmate—the computer programs saw it and Carlsen saw it.

Kramnik did not. He moved his king to the side. Carlsen immediately boxed it in with his own. Kramnik tested the boundaries of the prison, but he could not get out. The new reality dawned on him; the computer programs now called the game even. The two players jockeyed. Kramnik assayed with his bishop, and Carlsen countered with his king. They did this three times, resulting in an automatic draw.

When Carlsen ambled in, people put down their phones and laptops and applauded. His recovery had been more dramatic than many of his victories. Kasparov was amazed. Carlsen, with a lopsided grin, sat down to discuss the game.

Kramnik never showed up. I saw his pretty wife rushing toward an exit, as if the building were on fire. We were sitting in an outlet of Costa, a British coffee chain, off the lobby of the Hilton hotel in Kensington. It was two days after his match with Kramnik. He had arrived in London on December 5th and was scheduled to leave on the 20th.

He has essentially been a full-time chess player since he was fifteen, and spends more than a hundred and sixty days on the road each year. When he is not travelling, he lives with his family in a house in Baerum, an affluent suburb of Oslo. He rents the basement from his parents. For this trip, some friends from the chess club at his high school had come with him to play in the open part of the tournament. Carlsen, who left school two years ago without formally graduating, had gone out with his old friends for pizza and bowling, but at most tournaments he is either alone or with his father, Henrik, who helps manage his career and, to an extent, his life.

If Carlsen plays in a tournament in less than clean clothes, chances are that Henrik did not come with him. Sometimes, he works out at the gym to relieve the tension of a match. When he is at home, he plays Wii Sports Resort and Mario Kart, and with his family he plays SingStar, a karaoke game; he also likes to tease his three sisters. I asked Carlsen if he wanted to go to college. Henrik sat by his side, and Carlsen let his father do nearly all the talking.

Carlsen barely made eye contact with me. In the months since, he had become a minor celebrity, thanks mostly to advertisements that he had made for G-Star. Carlsen has a baby face that is quickly solidifying into that of a young man, and he has the same loose sandy locks as Justin Bieber. Carlsen now makes more than a million dollars a year in endorsements and fees. He played against a team of three grandmasters. Each member of the trio suggested a move, and an online audience chose which one to play against Carlsen.

Not surprisingly, Carlsen won. Many people in the chess world considered the contest vulgar. Fresh from his comeback against Kramnik, Carlsen was a lot more relaxed. Well built, he was wearing a checked shirt over a T-shirt—both his own purchases—and he looked like a European college kid on holiday.

Indeed, his next stop was a Manchester United soccer game. As a little boy, however, he had shown unusual mathematical aptitude, which is often found in chess talents. Before Magnus was two, he could complete a fifty-piece jigsaw puzzle. He built elaborate models with Lego bricks. When Carlsen was about five, his father, who was then working as a supply manager for Exxon, brought out the chessboard. Henrik had played the game well as a young man.

He wanted to teach his oldest child, Ellen, and Magnus, who is a year younger. But neither paid much attention, and Henrik grew frustrated and gave up. When Magnus was almost eight, Henrik made another attempt to interest the kids in chess. School, which bored him, was quickly supplanted by chess. At breakfast, he sat down at his own table and tested chess moves on a board. Dinner I, of course, ate with them.

Magnus began to play in local junior competitions. Henrik picked him up after ski-jump practice and ferried him to the chess tournaments. Soon after Carlsen began instruction with Hansen, other kids stopped playing chess with him on the board in the school library. After he finished poorly in one competition, Hansen had to explain to him that it was permissible to get up and go to the bathroom. Carlsen was small and cute, with candid eyes and uncombed hair.

He brought along HobNobs and comic books. The combination of his cherubic face, dangling legs, and Donald Duck lulled his opponents. Chess is no sexier in Norway than in America. Carlsen would rather have become a sports star than a chess champion.

In London, he told me that, during his most recent visit to New York, he had gone to Washington Square Park and, unrecognized, played against the chess hustlers, beating them all. In fact, he was less interested in computers than most players his age. He liked to go online to find human opponents, but he resisted playing against the programs themselves. He had a remarkable instinct for where to place his pieces, and his study of strategy books gave him an unusually varied repertoire of moves.

In , Carlsen began studying with Simen Agdestein, a top Norwegian grandmaster. He would play with almost perfect form. Agdestein emphasizes that he taught Carlsen only sporadically, while the boy continued with school, soccer, and other ordinary pursuits.

The training ended when Carlsen was thirteen. Agdestein was once on the Norwegian national soccer team, so they also kicked the ball around. In , Henrik took a break from his work, and he and his wife removed their children from school for a year to tour Europe, much of the time in a minivan. The children did their homework in the back of the minivan or in hotel rooms at night.

Carlsen was playing constantly—about a hundred and fifty major tournament games a year—and he did well. He was hard to intimidate, and his interest in the game was prodigious. After a chess match, he went to his computer and played more chess online, especially if he had just lost. He still does this, now under pseudonyms. At a tournament in Reykjavik, Carlsen beat Anatoly Karpov, the former champion, in a game of blitz chess.

These two events made international news, but his parents remained uncertain whether to think of their son as a future professional chess player or as someone who happened to be very good at chess. They never did. But he continued working mostly on his own.

I mean, just playing the game has been enough for me. Because Carlsen has spent less time than most of his cohort training with computers, he is less prone to play the way they do. He relies more on his own judgment. This makes him tricky for opponents who have relied on software and databases for counsel.

Most of all, Carlsen keeps trying out fresh stratagems. He can look at an opening once and remember it. He went from No. In , Carlsen hired Kasparov to train him. Kasparov had long had his eye on Carlsen and was eager to take on the job. With Kasparov suggesting openings and helping him prepare for his opponents, Carlsen went on a tear through the major competitions, playing his best chess ever. One year after the collaboration began, on January 1, , Carlsen reached the No. Around this time, the collaboration came to an abrupt end.

Carlsen was playing in a tournament in Wijk aan Zee, in Holland. Kasparov, who was in Moscow, was communicating with him via Skype, and he proposed a substitute opening less than an hour before a game against Kramnik. Carlsen went to the board and sat immobilized, trying to wrap his mind around the new moves. He lost the game though he won the tournament. Carlsen decided that he and Kasparov were just too different.

Chess was brought to the West from India by way of Persia, sometime between the eighth and tenth centuries. European aristocrats adopted it and adapted it. Chess fit into their idea of a world with clear distinctions between the privileged and the poor. The game emphasized that society was bound by rules that even royalty had to obey: the Magna Carta made pastime. The Russian Revolution changed how chess was played.

Lenin, an enthusiastic player, made the game a priority for the new nation. In , the year the Soviet Union broke up, the top nine players in the world were from the U. By then, Soviet-trained players had held the world championship for all but three of the past forty-three years. The Soviet program emphasized focus, logic, and, above all, preparation. The board was an informational battleground, and work put in before the game allowed you to see chances that your opponent might miss.

The data gave them a significant advantage, but decades of Soviet dominance also led to complacency and a reliance on received wisdom. In fact, their reign was ended by unlikely kindred spirits: Western computer programmers. Magnus and his mother Kwenthrith are held hostage in a tower and later saved by Aethelwulf.

Later in the mid-season finale, Magnus was once again mentioned by Thorhall , an envoy telling Bjorn and Aslaug about Ragnar's secret about the Viking village being destroyed and the farmer killed.

King Ecbert is interested in Magnus to use as a tool for when Ragnar returns to Wessex, seeking to avenge the killing of the Viking settlement. King Ecbert will try to make a deal with Ragnar using Magnus. Ragnar stated that he never had sex with Kwenthrith. Later Aethelwulf banishes Magnus from Wessex in order to save him from a certain death. Magnus, upon meeting Lagertha and Ubbe , encourages them to join with King Harald 's forces, as he is persuaded that King Alfred is tricking them and will not fulfill his promise of granting them lands in East Anglia.

However, Ubbe refuses to believe Magnus is indeed Ragnar's son, which Bjorn does. After the departure of the West Saxon army to give battle to King Harald, Magnus goes to the Viking camp and tells him how much he despises King Alfred and that he is a viking. He then joins King Harald and his forces, fighting in the Battle of Marton and killing several West Saxon soldiers, including the standard bearer. The viking army is however defeated and Magnus sails away with King Harald and his remaining troops towards York.

He professes his faith in the Norse gods and declares that they will eventually triumph over the Christian God, and that one day "the name Jesus Christ will be utterly forgotten," thereby embracing the Viking cause.

He participates at the Siege of Kattegat and is killed by White Hair, leader of Ivar's personal guard. Vikings Wiki Explore.

Vikings: Valhalla. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? View source. History Talk 0. Do you like this video? Play Sound. I am Ragnar's son! Odin is with me and you cannot kill me! Season 4. Season 4 B.