Cover Magnus Carlsen at FIDE’s 2026 World Rapid and Blitz Team Championships in Hong Kong. (Photo: FIDE Hong Kong)
Magnus Carlsen at FIDE’s 2026 World Rapid and Blitz Team Championships in Hong Kong. (Photo: FIDE Hong Kong)
1 / 1
Visiting Hong Kong in June, the Norwegian chess grandmaster opened up to Tatler Asia about his approach to handling immense pressure, caring for family, and knowing when to step back
Magnus Carlsen, the greatest chess player of all time, has just finished a “terrible” game. When we meet on the sidelines of the FIDE World Team Rapid and Blitz Chess Championships 2026 in Hong Kong, an event hosted by the International Chess Federation (FIDE) and the Hong Kong China Chess Federation, the 35-year-old grandmaster—who has just passed 15 years as the world No.1—is generous with his time and answers everything at length, but the defeat has not gone anywhere.
As we sit down to chat, Carlsen describes himself as running “more or less two simultaneous processes,” the conversation with me, while still ruminating on the lost position somewhere underneath it. The second one, he notes wryly, can’t be switched off to be polite. “It’s still running,” he says with a smile. “I’m really pissed about it.” But Carlsen’s ability to run two very different processes simultaneously may be the secret to what has kept him at the very top of the game for so long.
It’s rare to meet the best chess player in the world on a bad day. Carlsen became a grandmaster at age 13, the world’s top-ranked player at 19, and now he is the rare player whose name means something even to people who have never played a game of chess. What he offers in our conversation is not a record of dominance, but a set of observations about learning to let go.
“You try and make informed decisions in a limited amount of time, and it doesn’t always work out, and that’s fine,” he tells me. “As long as you’ve made a decent decision, you can live with it.”
Read more: Chess grandmaster Kevin Goh is driven by a relentless competitive spirit
Seeking small advantages
Knowing when to resign
Off the clock
On to the next game
Cat Wang is an editor at Tatler Asia based in Hong Kong, where she covers business, wealth, innovation, and impact. Previously, she was a Forbes Asia reporter and assistant editor of the Forbes Asia 100 to Watch list, spotlighting startups and small companies on the rise across the Asia-Pacific. She began her career as a trainee reporter at the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s newspaper of record. Born in New York City, she graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a B.A. in political science.
