Carlsen a chess genius who clinched the Corus chess championship in the C category at the age of 13 and became a grandmaster a few months later. He surpassed a rating of 2800 at the age of 18 years and 336 days, making him the youngest individual to do so at the time. At the age of 19, he became the youngest person to ever reach number one in the FIDE world rankings.
Carlsen won the World Chess Championship in 2013 by defeating Viswanathan Anand. He won both the 2014 World Rapid Championship and the World Blitz Championship versus Anand the following year, becoming the first player to hold all three titles at the same time, a feat he repeated in 2019. In 2016, he successfully defended his world title in classical chess against Sergey Karjakin, Fabiano Caruana, and Ian Nepomniachtchi, and in 2021, he defeated Ian Nepomniachtchi.
