Magnus Carlsen

World's No. 1

“It’s always interesting to be part of this competition. Last time I was part of the team in 2024, we won the Blitz tournament but did not win the Rapid. I think everybody kind of wants to do something about that.

My main motivation is that I really like playing chess. I don’t have any particular things I want to achieve except for what’s in front of me at the time. Right now, I’m here and I really want to do well and help my team win this tournament.

I actually played two classical tournaments in recent months, and it was very interesting from exactly the perspective of learning. There turned out to be a ton of decisive games, and a lot of them strayed from the known paths early on. That kind of shocked me.

Not the mistakes I made — because that can be disappointing — but the number of times where I mis-evaluated something was, first of all, shocking to me, but also very interesting, because it told me that I still have so much to learn. That certainly broadened my horizons.

It’s probably not a super long perspective on me playing very actively, but we’ll see. I don’t have a definite stopping point or anything like that for the moment. I enjoy playing, so I don’t really think about a definite stop.”