At five years old – an age by which any aspiring¹ grandmaster should at least have made a start – Magnus Carlsen showed little interest in chess. His father, a keen amateur player, stowed away the family chessmen and assumed that was that.

到了5岁，任何一个胸怀大志的特级大师应该至少已开始学棋，但那个年纪的芒努斯?卡尔森(Magnus Carlsen)对国际象棋毫无兴趣。他的父亲，一位喜爱国际象棋的业余棋手，只能把家里的象棋束之高阁，认为事情就这样了。

He was wrong. This week, in a tournament held in the Russian town of Sochi, the 23-year-old Norwegian retained the world championship he first won almost effortlessly last year. Appearing in a casual blue jacket covered with the logos of his sponsors, Carlsen said in modest but self-assured tones that he was “happy and relieved . . . it was a tough match”. Sunday afternoon’s victory against former champion Viswanathan Anand confirmed what many have long suspected: that the man who won is the best chess player there has ever been.

他错了。去年在俄罗斯索契举行的国际象棋世界棋王争霸战中，这位23岁的挪威青年成功卫冕。前年，他几乎不费吹灰之力就拿下了这项赛事的冠军。穿着印有赞助商标识的蓝色休闲夹克，卡尔森以谦虚而又自信的口吻称，自己“高兴，感觉如释重负……这是场艰难的比赛”。在与前冠军维斯瓦纳坦?阿南德(Viswanathan Anand)对弈中取得的胜利，证实了很多人猜了很久的一件事：他就是有史以来最优秀的棋手。

It was when he was 13, still baby-faced and turning up to tournaments with Donald Duck comic books in his hand, that Carlsen took chess’s highest official title of grandmaster. He topped the world rankings six years later, in 2010, and this May achieved a rating of 2,882 points – the highest of any human in history. His meteoric² rise prompted Garry Kasparov, a former world champion, to predict: “Before he is done, Carlsen will have changed our ancient game.”

13岁时，仍是一脸稚气、手中拿着《唐老鸭》漫画出现在赛场的卡尔森，便拿到了国际象棋界最高的官方头衔——特级大师(Grandmaster)。六年后的2010年，他登上了世界排名的首位，并在去年5月取得了人类选手史上最高的国际等级分——2882分。他的异军突起促使前世界冠军加里?卡斯帕罗夫(Garry Kasparov)预言称：“在他结束职业生涯前，卡尔森将改变这一古老的游戏。”

For a professional chess player, he is utterly³ atypical. Most develop an obsession⁴ for the game within a couple of years of learning to talk; Carlsen was eight by the time he finally came around to it. Most eschew⁵ other activities; Carlsen loves football and skiing. As a boy, he practised ski-jumping. He supports Real Madrid, often attending matches, and follows basketball’s Boston Celtics. He even models for G-Star Raw, a Dutch fashion company known for urban jeanswear.

对于职业棋手来说，他是绝对的异类。多数人在开始说话后的两年内就对这项运动情有独钟；卡尔森最终对国际象棋产生兴趣时已经8岁。多数人不参加除国际象棋外的其他活动；卡尔森则热爱足球和滑雪。小时候，他曾练习过跳台滑雪。他支持皇家马德里足球俱乐部，经常去看球赛，还是波士顿凯尔特人篮球队的粉丝。他甚至还为以都市牛仔服著称的荷兰时装公司G-Star Raw当模特。

His vocation⁶ transports him to a fiendishly complicated universe of time, space and material balance. So huge is the number of possible chess games that, by comparison, all the particles in the known cosmos⁷ seem like a few jangling pieces of change. Computers have become an indispensable tool to professional players trying to navigate⁸ these constellations⁹ of possibility, and to the theoreticians who help them. “When you watch professionals play the opening, you assume that they are calculating variations,” says Frederic Friedel, co-founder of Chessbase, a software company. “A lot of the time, they are just trying to remember computer lines.”

他的职业把他带入了一个关于时间、空间和“子力平衡”的极其复杂的宇宙。可能出现的棋局数目如此庞大，以至于已知的宇宙中的所有粒子相比之下像是寥寥几个叮当作响的零钱。计算机已成为试图驾驭这些可能性星座的职业棋手——以及帮助他们的理论家——不可或缺的工具。“当观看职业棋手开局时，你以为他们在盘算各种变异，”软件公司Chessbase的共同创始人弗雷德里克?弗里德尔(Frederic Friedel)称，“很多情况下，他们只是在回忆计算机设计的棋路。”

Not Carlsen. When he plays, often in ripped denims, he fidgets and slouches. A few moves into the eighth game of last week’s match against Mr Anand, he propped¹⁰ his square jaw¹¹ on his left hand – and appeared to take a nap. But the most remarkable¹² thing about this largely self-taught player is his unorthodox approach to the game. He sidesteps almost all of the computer wizardry that others consider essential. Paying far less attention to opening theory than his rivals, he is happy to go down paths that may offer no advantage yet have the benefit of dragging opponents out of their “openings book”. Once beyond the reaches of computer-aided openings, Carlsen starts to turn the screw.

卡尔森是个例外。下棋时，经常穿着乞丐装牛仔裤的他会坐立不安、无精打采。在与阿南德进行棋王争霸的第8局中，才下了几步，他便用左手支起方下巴，看起来像是打盹。然而，这名基本上自学成才的棋手最与众不同的是他非正统的棋路。他避开了别人认为不可或缺的几乎所有计算机路数。他远不如对手那样关注开局，而是乐于沿着貌似没有优势、却有利于把对手拖出“开局套路”的路数下棋。一旦超出了计算机辅助开局的棋步，卡尔森便开始大开杀戒。

Peter Heine, himself one of the world’s top players, is Carlsen’s most-trusted assistant. “Magnus believes in his pure chess strengths,” he told the FT this week. “You shouldn’t be able to do that in today’s world and none of us thought it was possible. Luckily, we were wrong.”

本身就是全球最顶尖棋手之一的彼得?海涅(Peter Heine)是卡尔森最信任的助手。“芒努斯相信自己纯粹的下棋实力，”他告诉英国《金融时报》，“按理说，你在当今世界做不到这样，我们谁都不认为有这种可能。幸运的是，我们错了。”

When preparing for a match, the world champion has better things to do than homework. “We play a lot of basketball,” Mr Heine says.

在准备比赛时，这位世界冠军有比“备战”更好的事情去做。“我们经常会打篮球，”海涅称。

Away from the chessboard, Carlsen is surprisingly normal. The son of two engineers, he was born in Tonsberg, south of Oslo, and grew up with his three sisters. Friends say he has a good sense of humour. Last year he moved into a flat in central Oslo; before that he lived in the basement of the family home.

不下国际象棋时，卡尔森普通得令人吃惊。父母都是工程师的他，出生在挪威奥斯陆(Oslo)以南的滕斯贝格(Tonsberg)，与3个姐妹一起长大。朋友们说他很有幽默感。去年，他搬到了位于奥斯陆中心的一座公寓；此前他一直住在家里的地下室。

Carlsen never went to university. But in 2003 his father took a break from his managerial post at Exxon and the family embarked¹³ on a year-long, 10,000km road trip around Europe to broaden the children’s horizons.

卡尔森从没上过大学。不过，2003年，在埃克森(Exxon)管理岗位工作的父亲申请休假，全家开始长达一年、总计1万公里的欧洲自驾游，以开阔孩子们的视野。

Today Carlsen is single and rich, but his manager Espen Agdestein says he “has never bought an expensive thing in his life”. Flashy cars? He has yet to acquire a driving licence. At home, he does not even use a chessboard.

如今的卡尔森单身又富有，但他的经纪人埃斯彭?阿格德斯坦因(Espen Agdestein)称，他“这辈子还没有买过一样昂贵的东西”。拉风的汽车？他还没有拿到驾照。在家里，他甚至不用棋盘。

What Carlsen does possess, however, is a phenomenal memory. By the age of five, he had memorised the names and populations of all 430 of Norway’s municipalities.“His favourite board and pieces are the ones in his head,” Mr Heine says.

然而，卡尔森的确拥有惊人的记忆力。5岁时，他已经记住挪威全部430个行政区的名称以及人口数量。“他最喜欢的棋盘和棋子都在他脑海中，”海涅称。

Carlsen’s style is positional, relying more on the accumulation of tiny advantages than the attacking pyrotechnics of, say, Kasparov. For his victims, that means slow asphyxiation¹⁴ as he methodically snuffs out their hopes.

卡尔森的风格是局面走法，在更大程度上依赖于积小胜为大胜，而非卡斯帕罗夫式的狂轰滥炸。对于他的手下败将而言，这意味着在卡尔森有条不紊地扼杀其希望时慢慢窒息。

Just ask Judit Polgar, one of the greatest chess players of all time, who has found herself more than once on the wrong end of Carlsen’s merciless technique. “When I played him, it felt like I was drowning,” she told the FT.

问问史上最杰出棋手之一尤迪特?波尔加尔(Judit Polgar)吧，她不止一次发现自己误入卡尔森无情设计的死胡同。“当和他对弈时，我感觉就像是溺水，”她向FT表示。

What mesmerises the chess world is that even with the game’s unfathomable complexities¹⁵, Carlsen has a seemingly innate¹⁶ understanding of where to put the pieces – as if chess were his mother tongue. Asked in 2012 how he played so well, he replied, “I don’t know . . . the game somehow comes naturally”.

让国际象棋界感到困惑的是，尽管这项运动充满深不可测的复杂性，但卡尔森似乎对如何走子有着与生俱来的悟性——就好像国际象棋是他的母语一样。2012年，在被问及为何棋艺如此高超时，他回答称：“我不知道……对我来说这似乎都是自然而然的。”

What next? Having arrived at the top, it is tempting¹⁷ to think that the only path runs downhill. But Ms Polgar thinks otherwise. “What is frightening is to see him close to 2,900 points,” she says. “I think he can play much better.”

接下来会怎么样？在到达顶峰后，人们会不由自主地想到，唯一的路是下坡路。但是波尔加尔不以为然。“看到他积分接近2900实在吓人，”她称，“我觉得他的成绩能远超于此。”