Laurent Fressinet, the Frenchman who coaches Magnus Carlsen in chess

2023-04-25 07:23:46

Laurent Fressinet. SEBASTIEN SORIANO/Le Figaro

PORTRAIT – Himself double champion of France and vice-champion of European chess, this French grandmaster is one of the assistants of the Norwegian world champion.

He is not mad like Fischer, Morphy and Steinitz. He’s not a mathematician, doesn’t wear a full intellectual beard, or little bookworm glasses. At 41, under his false air of newsboy, Laurent Fressinet is nevertheless a grand master of the game of chess. And not just anyone, since he has been training Magnus Carlsen, the star of 64 squares for more than a decade now. The Norwegian champion took him into his team for his qualities as an analyst, of course, but also because he is “an indispensable good companion”.

It was almost by chance that the Frenchman was drawn to the chessboard when he was a kid in Dax: “With my grandfather, I played checkers. But in my town there was only one chess club. My parents thought it was pretty much the same thing. Very quickly, however, his liveliness and phenomenal calculating ability propelled him into competitions: at age 9, he finished 7^e in the county championship. “I was so disappointed that…

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