Cross over appeal

By MARK LEWIS Associated Press
STAVANGER, Norway May 6, 2013 (AP)

He does fashion shoots with Liv Tyler, enjoys soccer-style sponsorships deals and was recently named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people. Who is this superstar? The world’s top-ranked chess player.

With his trendy look and athletic physique, Norway’s Magnus Carlsen has brought an injection of cool to the normally sedate world of global chess — extending its popularity beyond its niche following. The 22-year-old’s home country is buzzing with excitement as he competes in a tournament here just months before he tries to crack the greatest prize in the game: the chess World Championship.

In November, the young Norwegian challenges the reigning world champ, Viswanathan Anand, for the title, which typically is contested every other year. The inaugural Norway Chess competition in Stavanger, starting Tuesday, is being widely touted as a dress rehearsal for the championship that is tentatively slated to be played in Chennai, India, where Anand enjoys home court advantage.

With the lure of Carlsen and the 43-year-old Anand, and the 275,500 euros prize money, the competition has attracted one of the strongest lineups ever assembled for a chess tournament. Even with the withdrawal in April of world No. 2, Vladimir Kramnik, the 10-man competition will feature seven of the world’s top 10 players, and nine of the top 16, all vying for the 100,000 euros top prize.

“It is very good timing for us. It is very big for Norway that Magnus is doing so well and this probably wouldn’t have been possible without him,” said Norway Chess chairman Kjell Madland. “We hope it will be the first of very many big chess moments in Norway.”

The competition is the first example of oil and gas-rich Norway, today one of the most successful welfare states in the world, leveraging Carlsen’s brilliance to try to earn a place alongside more traditional chess superpowers like Russia, Armenia and the United States.

“It is right to say that when nations are in good shape, they tend to throw up good chess players,” said Simon Terrington, a British chess writer, evoking Russian chess legend Garry Kasparov’s observation that every world champion is a representative of the geopolitical age.

Russian mastery in the shape of Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov in the 1980s helped prop up an otherwise creaking Soviet ideology. Later, Viswanathan Anand’s triumph in the World Championship in 2000 and his reign as world champ since 2007 has coincided with the re-emergence of India as a great world power. Carlsen took Anand’s place at the top of the monthly world rankings in July 2011. Anand has since slumped to 5th.

Now Carlsen’s prodigious brilliance is seen by some as bringing intellectual and cultural heft to the social welfare models of Nordic Europe, particularly Norway.

“Chess is connected to what you can call a kind of prestige in the sense that many people look upon the best players as very intelligent and many countries would like to be associated with this,” said Joeran Aulin-Jansson, president of the Norwegian Chess Federation. “We hope that the next Magnus Carlsen will come from Norway, though the chances in such a small country are fairly slim.”

Full article here.