Chess is a game of intelligence. No use of brawn, all use of brain. The reigning World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen, holds a monumental IQ of 190. Trained under the legendary chess icon Garry Kasparov, Carlsen is widely regarded as “the genius who’ll only get better.” Although, not only in chess, he is also getting better in other aspects. In fact, the Norwegian is among the 10 players of Fantasy Premier League!
Fantasy Premier League is a famous online online free to play fantasy football game, where players build up teams with footballers from Premier League teams. The core is determined by how the footballers perform in real life in every match day, and the players get score based on that.
With an ever growing player base of more than 7 million, Carlsen is currently having his best FPL season so far- and is currently 3rd in the world. Not only that, the 29 year old is also topping the list of players in Norway.
His FPL team is called ‘Kjell Ankedal’, and user @alponcing posted the current week’s ranks on Twitter.
Yeah he's 3rd and still can climb up because this gameweek is not over yet pic.twitter.com/Yhjsf12Qr9
— uwu paksa (@alponcing) December 8, 2019
The present FIDE World no. 1’s fantasy team consists of EPL stars like Mohammed Salah from Liverpool, Leicester City’s Jamie Vardy and Tottenham winger Heung-Min Son. With consistent footballers in his team, Carlsen has reguarly got high scores every week.
“It is a similar game, it requires planning and strategy. And he has an incredible memory which helps.” Speaking to the Guardian, the current World Chess Champion stated that the game of chess and FPL require somewhat equivalent methods.
However, is pretty humble about his achievement in the virtual game, saying that his fate has helped him to enter the top 10 list.
“In chess, you know when you’ve done well and when you’ve done poorly, but it’s hard for me to take praise for fantasy league, when I’ve just been lucky,” he added.
Tarjei Svensen, famous chess journalist revealed that Carlsen is an avid Football fan since his childhood, and regularly follows the English top flight.
“His level of knowledge about English football is amazing, which must help him a lot,” Carlsen’s compatriot told Guardian.
Last month Carlsen posted a photo of him doing football skill moves while he was at the Grand Chess Tour in Kolkata.
Killing time before round 6 at @GrandChessTour Kolkata.
My game against Vidit can be viewed at @chess24com : https://t.co/DcgVqKdJ6f pic.twitter.com/KEpF4oj9hS
— Magnus Carlsen (@MagnusCarlsen) November 23, 2019
