At the young age of 15 GM Magnus Carlsen is continuing to show he's on his way to being one of the greatest players in the world.

Currently ranked 63rd in the world, Carlsen (2646) of Norway, took on the 52nd ranked player in the world, GM Loek van Wely (2655) of the Netherlands, this past week in a match up sponsored by DSB Bank.

The two grandmasters played four games between April 28th and May 1st. The games were played with 2 hours for 40 moves, 1 hour for the next 20 moves, 15 minutes added after move 60 with 30 seconds aded for each move after move 60.

In game one van Wely got a nice victory with white playing the Queen's Indian. In game two Carlsen was on white and struck right back getting a nice victory against van Wely's Sicilian, Paulsen variation.

Games three and four both ended in draws. With a final score of 2.0 - 2.0, both players headed to the tie break. In the tie break the time controls changed drastically making it a blitz play off. The time controls were 5 minutes + 2 seconds a move!

In the first game of the tie break the 15 year old rising star pulled off a beautiful win with black against van Wely's English opening, sacrificing a rook for a flank pawn guarding van Wely's king and a knight. In the endgame van Wely had a pair of rooks compared to Carlsen's rook and knight, however, Carlsen was up two pawns and gained a third one on move 53! On move 54 van Wely sacrificed one of his rooks in order to stop Carlsen's passed c-pawn from queening and advancing his own passed a-pawn to the seventh rank. Unable to stop the pawn from queening Carlsen had to give up his rook, but there were still no worries in his camp. van Wely's rook against the knight and four pawns would be no match as the young master snatched up the final pawn on move 59. van Wely resigned.

The Norwegian prodigy got another win, with white, in game two of the blitz tie breaks. Game three ended in a draw and Magnus cleaned up getting a win with white in the final game. An exciting match indeed.

Turning 16 in November of this year, Carlsen is proving that he can take on some of the best players in the world. In January of 2004 at the young age of 13 Carlsen won the C group of the Corus Chess Tournament and this year Carlsen won the B group of the same tournament. Carlsen was also the youngest player ever to qualify for the candidate matches in the WCC. He's on the rise!

You can follow the young phenom's live action next week on the ICC as he plays in the Bosna Sarajevo 2006 tournament.

Check out these excellent games from the van Wely vs. Carlsen match up.