Of hoodies and historical things: chess star Carlsen wins at St. Pauli debut

Chess star Magnus Carlsen sat on the board for the FC St. Pauli chess department for the first time on Saturday. With the help of the Norwegian, the promoted team achieved their first ever Bundesliga victory, which was only hindered by a small problem at the beginning.

The timing is right, the sweater isn’t. At 2 p.m. sharp, Carlsen comes to the Brahms office. In jeans, white sneakers and a black St. Pauli hoodie with a white skull. He received it from club president Oke Göttlich on Friday evening. But the divine gift doesn’t fit now and so Carlsen has to “start again”.

The 34-year-old’s first Bundesliga game for St. Pauli was only briefly delayed. Because Oliver von Wersch gives the Norwegian superstar his beige chess department hoodie. “A small logistical problem. I’m getting a new one now,” says the deputy head of the chess department and team manager of the brown and white team with a wink.

“Hells Bells” at Carlsen’s St. Pauli debut

And so a little later Carlsen comes to the board to the sounds of “Hells Bells” by AC/DC, where his Dutch opponent Max Warmerdam from SG Solingen is waiting for him. The otherwise very quiet sport briefly becomes loud at this moment. The relationship between the slightly different club and the slightly different chess player, the only global superstar in his sport, has officially been “started”.

And then there is peace. The 30 spectators who have received tickets watch the games in the simple arcade almost reverently. Light gray wall panels, dark gray carpet, large rectangular ceiling lights. Normally, the room serves as an “open space” for the employees of the statistics company, which is a sponsor of St. Pauli’s chess players and makes the rooms available to the club, for meetings, conferences and agreements.

Four minutes wait for the first train

But there’s nothing to talk about on Saturday. There are 16 boards on 16 closely spaced white tables. St. Pauli against Solingen eight times, Werder Bremen against Düsseldorfer SK eight times. Actually, the eyes of those watching are focused almost exclusively on board one of the St. Paulis game: all eyes on Magnus. At the beginning, Carlsen repeatedly supports his head on his right hand, his left hand grips his right elbow, his white-sneakered feet sometimes rocking, sometimes crossed.

The spectators have to wait four minutes before Carlsen made his first move in the FC St. Pauli hoodie. He “counters” Warmerdam’s first move with a pawn (c2-c4) also with a pawn (e7-e5). The Norwegian and his opponent keep getting up from their table and looking at other boards.

Arrival from the Ruhr area for Carlsen’s debut

They then have to pass Laura Mirtsch. From the first move, the 38-year-old stands one meter away from the Carlsen Warmerdam table, facing Carlsen. For the Dortmund native, “a dream will come true” this Saturday. In the morning she and her husband Christoph Thiemann, who gave her the cards for Christmas, set off from the Ruhr area for Hamburg. And they are prepared and have bought brown and white striped shirts especially for the trip to the Hanseatic city.

Mirtsch is a big chess and Carlsen fan. This is also because she shares something with the Norwegian, as she says. “Always needing something new.” She felt similarly when Carlsen gave up his world title after winning it continuously from 2013 to 2023. That was the moment when her enthusiasm for chess really took off. “I like his attitude.”

Especially since the Freestyle Chess Challenge in Weissenhaus, Schleswig-Holstein last year, it’s been a bit of a whim, she says with a laugh. There isn’t a day when she doesn’t read about chess, watch videos on the Internet or play with her three children. “Chess is good for me,” says the speech therapist.

In the gaming room she looks at the Carlsen board as if spellbound. “I enjoy being able to live out this concentration.” It’s an “awesome game” and she loves “the focus.” And yes, there is a “little teenage crush” there too, she says with a laugh.

Wood-panelled auditoriums

He can live with this “competition,” says her husband with a wink. Thiemann himself is not an explicit chess fan, but is enthusiastic about the “very comfortable atmosphere” in the Brahms-Kontor with its brick facade and Art Deco entrance. Or the wood-paneled walls and herringbone-look wooden floors in the two auditoriums. There is food and drinks here. Children play chess against each other or with their parents. The games are broadcast on televisions.

This “is incredibly exclusive,” says Thiemann – and by that he also means the proximity to the players. “There’s no fear of contact,” he says as he briefly leaves the rooms and has a drink at a bar table in the tiled stairwell.

Inside, his wife has meanwhile taken off the brown and white fan utensil that she had been wearing over her white blouse. Too warm. Temperature regulation, along with Carlsen’s last-minute hoodie change, remains the biggest “problem” that day for St. Pauli’s team manager von Wersch.

When the games run for around two hours, he can also sit down. He is satisfied. He says he has been working towards this day since last March. “When Magnus came down the hall I could have cried.” Even then, Hajo Kehr, one of the two department heads, “still couldn’t really understand it.” For a long time he assumed “that we would compete with the promoted team”.

Some of the promotion team put out

And suddenly Carlsen. And his best friend David Howell (on board two) as well as Johan-Sebastian Christiansen (Norway, board three) and Jonas Bjerre (Denmark, board four). Also and above all with the support of sponsors such as the Weissenhaus Chess Academy from patron Jan Henric Buettner and the connections of grandmaster Sebastian Siebrecht, St. Pauli has put together a team with world-class players – provided the new arrivals have time like this weekend. A team that should help keep the class.

For Bartosz Socko, who is often on board one in his promotion year, this means board six this Saturday. For Giso Jahncke it means that he doesn’t play at all. When he found out that Carlsen was coming to St. Pauli, he had a variety of thoughts in quick succession, he says: “First thought: super cool. Second thought: crap, then I won’t play at all. Third thought: it’ll do the trick department together.”

The wife of referee helps out

And so they all pitch in. Even those who weren’t actually intended for it – like Ingrid Schulz. She is the wife of Hugo Schulz, one of the two referees that day. She actually just wanted to take her husband from Langenhorn to the Brahms office, but then “hands were needed.” And then you help in the chess community and especially at FC St. Pauli, she says. And so Schulz, who lived in the district herself for a long time, is really making a difference. With coffee and fruit, cake and sandwiches.

The twelve-person organizational team started setting up at eight in the morning. The tables, the boards, but also a room in which the entire technical infrastructure is located. Cables on laptops on cables and laptops. And on the other hand: microphones for live commentary on the stream. A data center with an integrated studio.

Glenn Wussmann is standing in the next room, near the television on which the moves from Carlsen’s game are being broadcast. He was the last to get hold of one of the coveted tickets – according to Wersch’s department vice president, there were “hundreds of requests” for the 99 euro tickets. On Friday. Wussmann originally found out about the appointment far too late and didn’t get a ticket, but then thought: “I’ll try again.” Mail out and lucked out because a cardholder had to have his card returned.

Now he’s happy because “I’ll only get this chance once.” The 32-year-old from Hamburg got into chess through his little brother “because I wanted to be better than him.” That hasn’t worked so far, he says. But there was a visit to Carlsen’s debut. And even if he doesn’t actually have anything to do with the club, he is “for St. Pauli when he plays here.”

It’s this kind of enthusiasm that von Wersch wants. For St. Pauli and chess. “At times we have up to 1,500 people in the streams at the same time. That’s the difference between Magnus and the others,” he says happily.

Carlsen paves the way to a historic victory

And the Norwegian plays confidently. After a good three hours he gave his new team a 1-0 lead on the way to a 5.5:2.5 victory. A piece of chess history, because it is the first Bundesliga success ever for Hamburg, who are now in tenth place in the table with three points. “The team didn’t start the season well. I’m happy that I was able to help today,” said Carlsen after the game.

His “hoodie donor” from Wersch was much more euphoric: “That’s really cool. Solingen is a top team that competed with the best line-up. The team is excited for tomorrow.” Then it’s against Düsseldorf, which will compete without world champion Dommaraju Gukesh. And yet the challenge becomes even greater. But who knows, maybe the Bundesliga newcomer will achieve a second victory on day two of the Carlsen Festival. As long as the hoodie fits, a lot of things seem possible.

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Hamburg Journal | 01/11/2025 | 7:30 p.m