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In any world, when the greatest to ever do it speaks, you have to listen. It's no different in chess. So, when Magnus Carlsen, last December, called a Turkish youngster the "best 14-year-old chess has ever seen", of course it made people stand up and notice.
That 14-year-old is Yagiz Kaan Erdogmuş. His coach, Grandmaster Shakhriyar Mamedyarov has set lofty ambitions for the now 15-year-old, who's from Bursa in Türkiye. Erdogmuş is already the youngest to reach a FIDE classical rating of 2600 and 2700, so why can't he be the first to ever reach 2900, Mamedyarov had asked a few months ago.
That is quite the aim. No one in this sport, not Carlsen, not Garry Kasparov, not Anatoliy Karpov, has ever reached 2900. So, is that unnecessary pressure on a youngster at this point? Not really, says Erdogmuş, 2900 is a goal, but not the only goal. "Yes, 2900 will be tough but I can do it. I think Magnus is the best player ever, but he couldn't reach the 2900. I'm not feeling the pressure now, because it's so early, I have to reach 2750 first, and I have other goals too," he said, during a media interaction in Bengaluru where he's participating in Global Chess League (GCL) 2026.
Erdogmuş is sharing space with Viswanathan Anand in the GCL, playing for the PBG Alaskan Knights, and it's an opportunity that he's relishing. "I can ask him how he was preparing when he was playing competitive chess, when he was preparing for world championships," the youngster said.
It's also been evident what kind of player Erdogmuş is. He's ambitious on the board, and that was particularly on show on Sunday evening, when he faced his coach Mamedyarov. "There were 100 ways in which I could have done a draw, but I wanted to win, and then I didn't convert," he said after his loss to Mamedyarov.
He was visibly upset, shaking his head multiple times as the game reached its conclusion. Before that game, he had said he was looking forward to it, and that it would be interesting to play against his coach, now 41 years old, and his reaction to the loss just showed how much he wanted to win. He will have one more opportunity to get one over Mamedyarov in the reverse fixture between the PBG Alaskan Knights and the CheQ Mumba Masters.
There was a similar reaction a few months ago, when Erdogmuş was on the receiving end of a typical Carlsen end-game masterclass. The youngster was annoyed with himself, because as he now explains, the blunder that cost him the game should have been an easy move to find. "When you play against Magnus, you feel the pressure sometimes, and you cannot see the easy moves," he says.
It was after that game where Carlsen said that he wasn't merely talented. Carlsen's exact words were that it would be a little bit inaccurate to call him talented. "I think he's just very, very good! He's a top player and he's ahead of what all people have been at 14," Carlsen had said back then.
So, how does one become such a top player at such a young age in a country with as little chess culture as Türkiye has had? It began in kindergarten, when he was fascinated by the chess board and the pieces.
"I really liked the game, I was beating everyone, I was just so motivated. I mean, chess made me very happy, when I played chess, I was just feeling very happy," he said.
He still continues to have fun on the chess board, and that has produced some iconic games already, not least a 190-move draw against Nodirbek Abdusattorov at the Grand Swiss last year, which was the longest match in the history of that tournament. He's only getting better, as his results this year have shown -- he was tied for third at the TePe Siegeman Classic and later went unbeaten in classical at the Biel Chess Festival. Everywhere he's gone in 2026, he's left an impression on more experienced, more fancied opponents.
For now, he says he finds bullet chess the most fun but understands that classical chess is where priority must be. Gukesh is the classical world champion, that's why he's so popular, Erdogmuş argued. "Classical is the most important format," he said, "because everyone cares about classical."
Like boys his age, he does have school to go to, but that is the extent of his academic ambitions. "I don't have any academic goal, so I'm focused on chess, I'm just going to school, because in Türkiye you have to go, and you have to, you know, pass the exams," he says."
Erdogmuş isn't the only Turkish teenager making waves. Last year, Ediz Gurel beat world champion Gukesh Dommaraju at the FIDE Grand Swiss tournament and came home to Türkiye to a hero's reception. Erdogmuş is very open in stating that one of his ambitions is to make Türkiye the best chess nation in the world. "Ediz and me, we are trying to make chess more popular, because in Türkiye it's not as popular as in India, for example. It's very important for us that people know chess more," he added.
If Yagiz Kaan Erdogmuş's career follows the path that many have predicted already, then no one will have done more to popularise the sport in Türkiye than the "best 14-year-old chess has ever seen".
