Childhood
Carlsen was born in Tønsberg, Norway on 30 November 1990 to Sigrun Øen and Henrik Albert Carlsen, both engineers by profession. The family spent one year in Espoo, Finland, and then in Brussels, Belgium, and in 1998 the family returned to Norway and settled in Lommedalen, Bærum. They later moved to Haslum. Carlsen showed an aptitude for intellectual challenges at a young age. At two years, he could solve 50-piece jigsaw puzzles, and at four, enjoyed assembling lego sets with instructions intended for children at a 10–14 year age group. His father taught him to play chess at the age of five, although he initially showed little interest in the game. The first chess book he ever read was Bent Larsen's Find the Plan. Carlsen developed his early chess skills by playing alone for hours at a time—moving the pieces around the chessboard, searching for combinations, and replaying games and positions shown to him by his father. He participated in his first tournament—the youngest division of the 1999 Norwegian Chess Championship—at the age of eight years and seven months, and scored 6½ out of 11 points.
Carlsen was later coached at the Norwegian College of Elite Sport by the country's top player, Grandmaster (GM) Simen Agdestein. In 2000, Agdestein introduced Torbjørn Ringdal Hansen, an International Master (IM) and former Norwegian junior champion, to Carlsen, and they started weekly training sessions in March. Carlsen made remarkable progress with Hansen, gaining over a thousand rating points in little more than a year. His "breakthrough" tournament occurred in the Norwegian junior teams championship in September of 2000, where Carlsen scored 3½/5 against the top junior players of the country, and a tournament performance rating (TPR) of about 2000. Apart from chess, which Carlsen studied about three to four hours a day, his favourite pastimes included football, skiing, and reading Donald Duck comics.
From autumn 2000 to the end of 2002, Carlsen played almost 300 rated tournament games as well as several blitz tournaments and other minor events. After this, he obtained three IM norms in relatively quick succession: the first was at the January 2003 Gausdal Troll Masters (score 7/10, 2345 TPR); the second was at the June 2003 Salongernas IM-tournament in Stockholm (6/9, 2470 TPR); and the third IM norm was obtained at the July 2003 Politiken Cup in Copenhagen (8/11, 2503 TPR). He was officially awarded the IM title on 20 August 2003. After finishing primary school, Carlsen took a year off to participate in international chess tournaments held in Europe during the fall season of 2003. That same year, he finished in a tie for third in the European Under-14 Boys Championship.
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“But childhood prolonged, cannot remain a fairyland. It becomes a hell.”
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—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)