How to Beat Magnus Carlsen

Exploring the toughest challenge in chess

Magnus Carlsen is arguably the strongest player of all time. His dominance is such that every defeat is a shock. They remind us that even he has his weak moments. In fact, identifying the root causes of their losses offers valuable lessons for all gamblers.

The quest for Cyrus Lakdawala begins with a series of wins and draws for Magnus to give the reader an idea of how incredibly difficult it is to beat him. The World Champion's arsenal is staggering: a superlative ability to calculate, an almost perfect intuition, probably the best endgame technique in history, an extensive and creative opening repertoire, a willingness to unbalance the position almost at any time and, last but not least: his matchless will to win.

How to beat Magnus Carlsen has a thematic structure that, coupled with Lakdawala's exceptionally accessible style, makes his lessons easy to digest. Sometimes even Magnus gets overwhelmed, sometimes he pushes too hard and goes off the edge of the cliff, and sometimes he can't find the right plan. And yes, even Magnus Carlsen makes some small mistakes. Lakdawala explains how and why.

It's wonderful to have a World Champion who is not only incredibly strong, but also happy to experiment and take risks. That's what makes Magnus Carlsen such a fascinating chess player. And that's why he's the hero of this book. There's no doubt that Carlsen has examined all your losses under a microscope. If he benefits from this process, so do we.

Cyrus Lakdawala is an international teacher living in San Diego, CA. He has taught chess for four decades and is a prolific and widely read author. His highly acclaimed books are How Ulf Beats Black, Clinch It! and Winning Ugly at Chess. He twice won the Chess Journalists of America (CJA) Best Instruction Book Award, in 2017 for Chess for Hawks and in 2020 for In the Zone: The Greatest Winning Streaks in Chess History.

"Lakdawala writes in a charming and very instructive manner". - Jeremy Silman, author of How to Reevaluate Your Chess

“Lakdawala's tone of voice is unique in chess literature; he's like a friend you've known for a long time. - Thomas Binder, from Glarean magazine