Simen Agdestein

Simen Agdestein
Full name	Simen Agdestein
Country	Norway
Born	(1967-05-15) 15 May 1967 Asker, Norway
Title	Grandmaster
FIDE rating	2630 (February 2014)
Peak rating	2630 (January 1993)

Simen Agdestein (born 15 May 1967) is a Norwegian who has excelled in chess, chess coaching and football. He is also an author of several books.

Agdestein is a chess grandmaster. He has won seven Norwegian chess championships, including the 2005 title. He is also the former coach of Magnus Carlsen, and is the brother of Carlsen's present manager, Espen Agdestein. He has authored and co-authored several books on chess, including a biography of Carlsen.

Agdestein is also a former professional footballer who represented the Norway national football team.

Chess career

Agdestein became Norwegian national champion at the age of 15, an International Master at 16 and a grandmaster at 18.

On a local level, his regular dominance of the Nordic and Norwegian Chess Championships during the 1980s amply demonstrated that there were few players who could resist his enterprising and inventive style. In international competition, he finished second at the 1986 World Junior Championship behind Walter Arencibia but ahead of Evgeny Bareev, Viswanathan Anand and Jeroen Piket. A little later, his Elo rating rose to over 2600.

In the late 1980s, Agdestein combined top-flight chess with a full-time football career, representing his country at both.^[1] In the early 1990s, a knee injury cut short his football activities. In 1999, Agdestein returned to winning ways, topping the Cappelle la Grande tournament that year and the Isle of Man tournament in 2003.^[2] Agdestein scored two tournament victories in 2013, when he won the Open Sant Martí in Barcelona with 8½ points out of 9 possible, with a rating performance of 2901,^[3] and the Oslo Chess International-Håvard Vederhus' Memorial with 7 points out of 9.^[4]

Agdestein has represented his country seven times at the Chess Olympiad, mostly playing first board and winning an individual (board 4) gold medal at his first appearance in 1982.^[5]

As a player of the white pieces, he shows a preference for the queen pawn openings, while with Black, favours the Ruy Lopez, Dutch Defence and Semi-Open Games. On the January 2007 FIDE list, he had an Elo rating of 2583, just short of his five-year top score of 2595 achieved in January 2004.

Agdestein works at the sports academy Norges Toppidrettsgymnas, where he teaches chess and soccer. He has been a chess coach to many young talents, including Magnus Carlsen.

His handle on the Internet Chess Club (ICC) is "Gruk".

Football career

Personal life

He was born in Oslo as a son of civil engineer Reidar Frank Agdestein (1927–2002) and secretary Unni Jørgensen (1934–).^[8] He is a maternal grandson of runner and botanist Reidar Jørgensen.^[9] In October 1996 he married Marianne Aasen, a later Member of Parliament.^[8] The couple had two children, but separated in 2008.^[10] Currently, Simen Agdestein works at Valler Upper Secondary School.

Bibliography

Source: BIBSYS^[11]

As an author or co-author

• Sjakkleksjoner med Simen Agdestein (1987)
• GATT, u-landene og miljøet : rapport fra en konferanse i Oslo 20. og 21. oktober 1994 (1994)
• Regionalt samarbeid versus apartheid : SADCC-landenes bestrebelser på å redusere transportavhengigheten til Sør-Afrika på 1980-tallet (1995)
• Simens sjakkbok (1997)
• Et hefte om internasjonalisering (1998)
• Den unge sjakkspiller (2001)
• Sjakk: Fra første trekk til sjakkmatt (2002)
• Wonderboy : how Magnus Carlsen became the youngest chess grandmaster in the world : the story and the games (2004)
• Sjakk (2007)

Books about Agdestein

• Arne Danielsen, Bjarte Leer-Salvesen, Bjarke Sahl, Atle Grønn. Simen Agdestein (2008)

References

External links

• Simen Agdestein player profile and games at Chessgames.com
• Rating data
• Tim Krabbe article
• Simen Agdestein at National-Football-Teams.com