Magnus Carlsen is arguably the strongest player of all time. His dominance is such that every
loss comes as a shock. They remind us that even he has his weak moments. In fact identifying
the root causes of his losses holds valuable lessons for all players. Cyrus Lakdawala's search
starts with a series of Magnus wins and draws to give the reader a feel for how incredibly
difficult it is to beat him. The World Champion's arsenal is awesome: a superlative ability to
calculate near-perfect intuition probably the best endgame technique ever a wide and
creative opening repertoire a willingness to unbalance the position almost anytime and last
but not least: his unparalleled will to win. How to Beat Magnus Carlsen has a thematic
structure which together with Lakdawala's uniquely accessible style makes its lessons easy
to digest. Sometimes even Magnus gets outplayed sometimes he over-presses and goes over the
cliff's edge and sometimes he fails to find the correct plan. And yes even Magnus Carlsen
commits straightforward blunders. Lakdawala explains the how and the why. It's wonderful to
have a World Champion who is not just incredibly strong but who is also happy to experiment and
take risks. That's what makes Magnus Carlsen such a fascinating chess player. And that's why he
is the hero of this book. There is no doubt that Carlsen has examined all his losses under a
microscope. If he benefits from this process then so will we.
