Magnus Carlsen’s Parents on Raising the World’s Best Chess Player
顶尖国际象棋手是如何养成的

HOW DO YOU SPOT a chess prodigy? Is there a moment–perhaps when he makes a boldly brilliant move out of nowhere or plasters his bedroom with pinups of Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov–when it all becomes clear?

如何发现一个国际象棋神童？是不是有那么一个时刻——比如他突然做出了一个大胆聪明的举动，或者在他的卧室里贴上费舍尔(Bobby Fischer)和卡斯帕罗夫(Garry Kasparov)的海报——一切就一目了然了？

Well, that wasn’t quite how it happened for Henrik Carlsen and Sigrun Øen, parents of 23-year-old Magnus Carlsen, the Norwegian who became a grandmaster at 13 and the youngest-ever world No. 1 at 19, and whose peak World Chess Federation rating (2,882) is the highest in history. Last November, Carlsen defeated Viswanathan Anand to become the World Chess Champion, a title he will defend against Anand later this year in a yet-to-be-decided location–possibly Norway.

但对于亨里克(Henrik Carlsen)和西格伦(Sigrun Oen)来说，事情并不是那样的。他们23岁的儿子、挪威人马格努斯(Magnus Carlsen)在13岁时就成为了国际象棋大师，并在19岁时成为有史以来最年轻的排名世界第一的棋手，他的国际象棋联合会(World Chess Federation)最高等级分（2,882）是有史以来最高的。去年11月份，马格努斯击败了阿南德(Viswanathan Anand)获得国际象棋世界冠军，今年晚些时候他将再度与阿南德对弈捍卫冠军头衔，不过截至目前比赛地还未确定，有可能在挪威举行。

Carlsen’s route to chess took a little longer than his subsequent stellar progression might suggest. Henrik, 52, a keen chess player himself, remembers introducing the game to Magnus and his older sister, Ellen, now 25, when his son was turning 5. But after a month or two, Henrik says, ‘I gave up, basically, in the sense that we continued to play chess occasionally, but I didn’t have any ambitions.’ He knew that legendary players such as Capablanca and Kasparov had understood the game–he clicks his fingers–‘just like that.’ Magnus and his sister, he says, ‘learned the rules quickly, and they could capture a piece, but to get two or more pieces working together, which is what chess is about, this spatial vision took a long time.’

与他后来耀眼的进步不同，马格努斯最初学国际象棋的进步并不是很快。今年52岁的亨里克自己也是一名国际象棋高手，他记得在马格努斯快要5岁的时候，他开始教马格努斯和他的姐姐埃伦(Ellen, 现在已经25岁)学棋。亨里克说，一两个月后，他基本上放弃了，感觉以后可以和他们偶尔玩玩国际象棋，但没有抱大的期待。他说，要知道那些传奇棋手，例如卡帕夫兰卡(Capablanca)和卡斯帕罗夫(Kasparov)可以说在弹指之间（他做了这样一个动作加以说明）就理解了国际象棋。他称，马格努斯和他的姐姐很快学会了国际象棋的规则，他们可以吃掉一个棋子，但不会让两个或者更多棋子联合作战，而这正是国际象棋的精髓所在，让他们学会这些花了很长时间。

At the time, Henrik reconciled himself to the fact that chess would simply be an enjoyable family pastime. ‘I felt, OK, they’re definitely not geniuses, but it doesn’t matter. Because I mean, we loved our children. Chess was something we could do together, just a hobby, like playing cards or anything else.’ In the meantime, there were signs that Magnus had the aptitude and the determination to perform impressive mental feats. Sigrun, 51, recalls her son sitting for hours with puzzles or making advanced Lego models, patiently working his way through pages and pages of instructions meant for children a decade older. ‘He had the ability to sit for a very long time, even when he was small,’ she recalls.

当时，亨里克接受了一个事实，即国际象棋只会作为他们的一种家庭娱乐方式。他说，他没有感到不满，他们显然不是天才，但这没有关系，无论如何他都会爱自己的孩子，国际象棋只是他和孩子们可以一起参与的一项爱好，就好像打牌或者做其他事情。与此同时，有迹象显示，马格努斯有能力和决心完成令人印象深刻的精神壮举。今年51岁的西格伦回忆道，他的儿子可以一坐几个小时思考如何完成一幅拼图或者是高难度的乐高模型，耐心地看完为大他十岁的孩子准备的一页又一页的说明书。她回忆道，马格努斯很小的时候就可以连续坐很长时间专注于一件事。

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This quality has contributed in no small measure to his success; chess commentators draw attention to his ability to wear down opponents, to wait patiently for them to make the tiniest mistake. Magnus himself maintains that he is an aggressive player but that audacity isn’t always what’s called for. ‘When you play against the best people in the world, they see through your plans, and you cannot win with a swashbuckling attack all the time,’ he says. ‘You just need to take what’s there.’

这种特质为他的成功带来了很大的帮助。国际象棋评论员们关注到马格努斯拖垮对手的能力，他可以耐心十足的等待对手犯下哪怕最小的错误。马格努斯认为自己是一个进攻型的棋手，但是比赛时并不总是需要大胆行动。他说，当你与全世界最好的棋手对弈时，他们看得透你的计划，你不能总是靠虚张声势的进攻赢得比赛；你所需要的是见招拆招。

His parents are eager to point out that he wasn’t an obviously faster learner than his sisters (he also has two younger siblings, Ingrid, 20, and Signe, 17) but that he kept on going, focusing his attention on a specific subject, such as car brands until he knew it inside out. When I ask Magnus about his childhood proficiency, he replies simply: ‘I didn’t particularly know if I was good at it or not; I just tried to do it.’

马格努斯的父母指出，在学习新东西时，他并不比自己的妹妹快上多少（马格努斯还有两个妹妹，一个是20岁的英格丽德(Ingrid)，另一个是17岁的西格纳(Signe)），不过马格努斯会不断的学习，全情专注在一件事情上，比如汽车品牌，直到了解透彻。当笔者问到关于小时候精通的事情时，马格努斯只是简简单单地回答道，他并不十分清楚自己是否擅长；只是尝试去做。

Then came a turning point. Just before Magnus turned 8, says Henrik, ‘Ellen suddenly understood enough to make it interesting for me to play with her.’ Magnus would sit to watch them and, a little later, join in. Henrik’s dilemma was that if he adopted poor strategy, his children wouldn’t learn anything, but he also didn’t want them to become discouraged. So he began to play with limited resources–just his king and a pawn–slowly adding pieces as they learned the game. Magnus’s interest started to grow, although Henrik maintains that ‘he just wanted to beat his sister.’ He had a competitive streak even as a small child? ‘Yes, absolutely,’ Sigrun says, ‘he still has that.’ More competitive than his sisters? ‘Absolutely.’ She laughs and gestures to her husband. ‘It’s not from me, it’s from him!’

亨里克说，转折点发生在马格努斯的8岁生日前不久。他说：“埃伦突然开窍了，这样我跟她下棋的时候就会觉得兴味十足。”马格努斯就坐着看他们下棋，后来没多久，也开始跟他们一起下。让亨里克感到为难的是，如果他总是使笨招，他的孩子们就什么也学不到，可他也不想让孩子们灰心丧气。于是他开始用自己的方式来下棋，比如一开始只用王和一个卒，然后在孩子们棋艺提高之后他再逐渐加子。马格努斯的兴趣越来越浓，不过亨里克认为，马格努斯只是想打败他姐姐。“他很小的时候就有争强好胜的表现吗？”“是，毫无疑问，” 西格伦说，“他现在仍然是这样。”“比他姐姐还争强好胜？”“毫无疑问。”她笑了，向她丈夫打着手势。“这点不随我，随他。”

Soon he was entering and very quickly winning tournaments. At home, during dinner, he began sitting apart from the family so he could study his chessboard while eating. ‘He was in the same room,’ remembers Sigrun, ‘so we could speak to him if we wanted to; he could hear what we were talking about if he wanted to join.’ Despite their unorthodox meals, they were, and remain, a close family.

不久之后他就开始参加锦标赛，并很快就取得胜利。在家里吃饭的时候，他开始跟家人分开坐，这样他可以一边吃一边研究棋局。西格伦回忆说：“他总呆在同一个房间里，这样我们如果想跟他说话就能说，而且他也能听到我们说的话，想加入我们就能加入。”虽然他们这种用餐的方式不太符合正统，但他们一家人不管是那时候还是现在都非常亲密。

There’s a particular bond between father and son, forged through a mutual love of chess. When Magnus was 12, Henrik took a year’s leave of absence from his job (he has spent recent years balancing his consultancy work in the oil industry with managing Magnus’s affairs) and took the children out of school so they could travel together throughout Europe, an experience that Magnus remembers as ‘more useful than staying in school that year.’ Now, he says, he realizes that a certain family resemblance is developing. ‘I think I’m becoming more like my father in a way,’ he says, laughing. ‘I’m cracking the same lame jokes!’ Many sons probably find themselves saying the same thing, but in the Carlsens’ case, there’s another dimension. ‘Whenever I lose,’ Magnus explains, ‘usually, I want to be alone, figure it out. A couple of times I’ve lost and I’ve been complaining to my father about it, and he says, ‘Just get up and stop whining.’ I think that’s the best advice I ever got.’

通过对国际象棋的共同爱好，父子之间建立了一条特别的纽带。马格努斯12岁时，亨里克请了一年的假，将孩子们带出学校，一起在欧洲旅行（最近几年，亨里克一直在石油业咨询工作和处理马格努斯相关事务之间寻求平衡）。马格努斯回忆说，这种经历比那一年留在学校里更有用。现在他表示，自己意识到家庭成员正在发展出某种相似性。他笑著称，他认为自己在某个方面变得更像父亲了，会开同一种蹩脚的玩笑。许多孩子可能都会发现自己说同样的话，但对于这一家人来说，事情还存在另一方面。马格努斯解释说，每次被击败时，他通常都希望独处并找出原因；有几次他输了后向父亲抱怨，父亲却告诉他爬起来别抱怨。他认为，这是自己到目前为止获得的最佳建议。

Sigrun, an engineer like her husband, is not a chess player, although she’s started to dabble with Play Magnus, an app that allows you to test your skills against the champion at various stages in his career. She describes herself as an introvert and dislikes the attention Magnus’s celebrity has brought, particularly when people approach him in the street. This happens even more now that he is modeling for the clothing company G-Star Raw, whose most recent ad campaign features him playing chess with the British model-actress Lily Cole. (Henrik remembers the reaction of Magnus’s sisters when his career took a turn toward fashion modeling: ‘He got a lot of credit for that. They thought, OK, now you’re getting somewhere!’)

西格伦与丈夫一样也是工程师，但她不玩国际象棋。不过，她已经开始尝试Play Magnus应用，这款应用允许玩家通过与职业生涯不同阶段的马格努斯对局来测试自己的水平。西格伦将自己描述为内向的人，她不喜欢马格努斯名人地位所带来的关注，尤其当人们在街上接近他时。现在这种情况甚至更多，因为他在担任服装公司G-Star Raw的模特。在G-Star Raw最近推出的广告中，马格努斯与英国模特兼演员莉莉•科尔(Lily Cole)进行国际象棋对弈。（亨里克回忆了马格努斯的姐妹们在马格努斯向时尚模特界发展时的反应：马格努斯获得了许多赞誉，她们认为，好吧，现在他小有名气了！）

Although Sigrun insists that she’s not starstruck by all the attention heaped on Magnus (‘I really don’t think so much about him as a world champion in chess,’ she says, ‘because he’s my son’), she did have to work through an emotional barrier when he was 9 years old and starting to compete regularly. As she watched him play in a match, all Sigrun could see was a little boy who looked unhappy, hunched over aboard as if he were struggling. Naturally, all she wanted to do was take him home. Afterward, she asked him if the contest had been painful for him. He looked at her with a blank, uncomprehending stare. No, he replied, he’d been having fun and was merely lost in thought. Now, says Sigrun, ‘I just want him to be happy. And as long as he’s happy, he can do whatever he wants.’

尽管西格伦坚称，马格努斯身上聚集的所有关注并未令她感到眩晕（她说，自己真的不太去想马格努斯的国际象棋世界冠军身份，因为他是她的儿子），但在马格努斯九岁并开始经常参加比赛时，她确实需要克服一种情感障碍。当西格伦观看儿子比赛时，她所能看到的只是一个看上去愁眉苦脸的小男孩弯腰驼背坐在棋桌前，就像面临内心的挣扎。在本能上，她唯一希望做的事就是带儿子回家。之后有一次，她问儿子比赛是否带来了痛苦。马格努斯用茫然不解的眼神看着她，回答说不是。马格努斯说，他一直在享受乐趣，只是陷入了思考中。西格伦表示，现在她只希望儿子高兴，只要他高兴，他就能做他想做的任何事。