Simen Agdestein

Simen Agdestein became Norway’s first Grandmaster in 1985 at the age of only 18. At that time, he was the youngest GM in the world. Soon after he was about to enter the absolute best with a peak of number 16 in the world.

However, soccer soon distracted his chess career, especially when he surprisingly was elected for the National soccer team of Norway. He had his debut against Italy in 1988, a team full of superstars like Franco Baresi, Gianluca Vialli and Paolo Maldini, to mention a few. Earlier, he had played some matches for the national junior- and under-21 team of Norway, so it was not totally out of the blue, but still, a very special combination.

He kept this double career going for a little while, but a bad knee injury and the complications that followed ended the soccer career, but also his chess career had a major setback after that. Simen went from an aspiring world class player to a happy amateur.

Some years later Simen managed to get chess included as a program at the Norwegian College of Elite Sports (Norges Toppidrettsgymnas, NTG), a perfect environment for developing world stars in many different sports.

Simen has been given credit for “discovering” Magnus Carlsen. Magnus started training at NTG at the age of 9 with 900 in rating. Four years later, he was a GM. Just some months after finishing high school at NTG, Magnus was number one in the world, a position he has held since.

Simen is still fully engaged as chess trainer at NTG. Of about 150 students altogether over the last 28 years, 11 have become GMs. Aryan Tari became World Junior Champion in his last year at NTG.

Who’s Norway’s next GM? One thing for sure, he will come from Simen’s training regime at NTG!