Chennai: He wanted to be part of the journey . So he quit as vice-president of Norway's biggest magazine group Egmont to join Team Magnus Carlsen as his manager.
And with his client just having conquered the world, Espen Agdestein, 48, is happy that he took the decision.
Running parallel to Magnus Carlsen and having same goals as the chess superstar, Agdestein has emerged as the best second in the game. The soft-spoken Norwegian, who himself was a decent chess player with a 2350 elo rating, idolises Mark Steinberg, who was an agent for Tiger Woods.
In chess, only a few have full-time man agers. Anand's wife Aruna doubles up as his manager. In Chennai, Agdestein was one of the busiest men and he acted as a buffer for Carlsen. The affable Agdestein kept the media in good humour leaving his ward to focus completely on chess. “Today, it has become important to have full-time managers,“ said Agdestein.
“You need to create a brand. Someone has to take care of the media. The chess training and tournament schedule has to be arranged.
Sponsors have to be wooed and your itinerary to take part in public events and endorsement activities need to planned,“ he added.
Carlsen requested Agdestein to become his full-time manager in 2011. “The last three years have been very interesting for me.
Carlsen has done a lot of things apart from reaching the incredible elo rating of 2870. He modelled for G-Star, visited Harvard University and taken on 10 lawyers in blindfold chess, played simul chess at Wall Street,“ said Agdestein, who added Carlsen is bound to create history in chess.
