Sometimes — perhaps once every 100 years or so — a talent emerges who defies the normal rules of intellectual development. Musicians would put Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in this special category. Mozart's chess equivalent would probably be José Raúl Capablanca, born in 1888, who taught himself chess at the age of four and became the strongest player in his native Cuba by the time he was 12. Capablanca duly became world champion in 1921, at which point he was described as "the unbeatable chess machine". But his own assumption that this was the case made him indolent, and to his — and the chess world's — astonishment he lost the ultimate crown just six years later to the prodigiously hard-working Russian Alexander Alekhine.

Today, we are fortunate to be witnessing the flowering of a chess genius of Capablanca-like natural ability. His name is Magnus Carlsen. Later this month, the Norwegian wunderkind celebrates his nineteenth birthday and next month he will play for the first time in the UK, as the top seed in the London Chess Classic, which takes place from 8-15 December at the Olympia Conference Centre.

Carlsen will be the big draw, but there are many other reasons for British chess fans to be excited. Among the seven other grandmasters competing are the Russian  former world champion Vladimir Kramnik; the mercurial US number one, Japanese-born Hikaru Nakamura; and Britain's very own former prodigy and world championship contender Nigel Short. When I asked Nigel a few months ago if he was excited by the prospect of playing in an event with such players, he emailed back: "Intimidated might be a more accurate word, Dominic." But Nigel, after a lean couple of years, has recently stormed back to his best, and is once again among the so-called supergrandmaster elite.

The event's organiser, the chess teacher and entrepreneur Malcolm Pein, tells me that he sees the tournament as a dry run for a bid to hold the world chess championship of 2012 in London, the year in which our capital will host the Olympic Games. Pein says that the anonymous sponsor of the London Chess Classic is one of his pupils, a wealthy man who believes that chess has underappreciated social and cultural benefits and can play a crucial role in developing the mind and character of the young.

Accordingly, there will be no entrance fees for under-16s to attend the event as spectators, provided they are accompanied by an adult paying a daily attendance fee of just £10 (contact www.londonchessclassiccom or 0207 388 2404). Better still, attending school groups will be able to have free chess lessons on the first three and last two days of the event.