Oslo, May 31 -- One of the first things Henrik Carlsen told Peter Heine Nielsen was not to have ambitions on his son's behalf: "If Magnus doesn't want to prepare, it's his decision." Magnus Carlsen was 13 years old at the time. The standing instruction has not hurt. More than two decades later, Nielsen can call himself coach to a generational talent, a five-time world chess champion, the world No 1, and arguably one of the greatest players in the history of the game. "I mean, it sounds wrong to say it perhaps, but I have never seen Magnus as very ambitious.that's maybe because he's won everything. Here at Norway Chess this year, he lost two out of his first three classical games and if I do the math maybe it doesn't seem too likely that he'll win the tournament. But when you work with Magnus, you get used to miracles." During Round 3 of the classical game which he lost to Praggnanandhaa, Carlsen spoke of being "surprised" despite there being at least 18 decent moves for White on move 6 of the Najdorf. Preparation, unlike his World Championship days, has been vastly scaled down. "Magnus is not preparing as much as the other players today. The work we do is not comparable to what we used to do during his World Championship days. We're not having training camps often and neither do we have a big team anymore. Preparation hasn't necessarily gone well in this tournament, but I hope we don't come off as completely unprepared. His strongest suit isn't the opening and it doesn't need to be, unlike Vishy who would use the opening to kill his opponent. Also, back in the day you could get a big advantage if you were working hard, these days that edge is minimal." There is a World Championship later this year and Nielsen believes that there are at least ten Grandmasters who won't be significant underdogs should they have to play defending champion Gukesh in a match and with the exception of Carlsen, he would have a reasonable chance against all of them. "Gukesh can lose to everybody, but he can also win against everybody. He has this very peculiar style, and he's very strong, very dangerous and not afraid at all. It gives him a high chance to succeed. His problem is that sometimes when he loses, he loses in a very ugly fashion. If you want to play all openings like Gukesh does and put as much pressure all the time on your opponent - If that worked every time, you would have a 3000 rating. When people say things like Gukesh is lucky and such, I would say he's taking all these risks because he thinks it's a good strategy. When it goes wrong, he lives with the consequences. It's very interesting in the sense that he doesn't have the solidity that, for instance, Vishy had. Maybe, of course, Magnus too. If people insist that because he's the world champion, he should be the best player in the world, I don't think there is anything insulting in that. If anything, it makes your performance look better. It's not comparable, but someone wrote online that I was the weakest chess player ever to have reached 2700. The way I look at it, it's quite the achievement because I actually did reach 2700 with my talent. Gukesh's talent is immense, but it's not fully developed yet, but to actually win a World Championship at his age is ridiculously good." "It's very hard to predict what will happen in his match against Sindarov. My margin goes to each player, winning by three points. It feels like anything could happen." Nielsen is spending the greater part of his day during this Norway Chess fortnight, travelling to and from Carlsen's house outside Oslo, where they go golfing. "We both are obsessed with it. The first day we came here he beat me quite easily. I tend to be obsessed with whatever interest I take up, it was Japanese chess at one point. The good thing is in golf you're mainly playing against yourself, it's not man vs man it's man vs the course."...