Magnus Carlsen

A major reason for not blogging much since March was the "secret" cooperation with Kasparov. It felt too awkward to try to relate inside stories from tournaments while suppressing the main news. After going public in September about the cooperation, and winning Nanjing in style, Magnus soon got his own blog making the continuation of this blog less meaningful. 

At this blog at http://www.arcticsec.no/index.php?button=blog&main_image=35 Magnus thanked his trainer Garry Kasparov and his main sponsors investment-bank Arctic Securities and lawyers Simonsen for their contributions to his rise to the number 1 spot on the January 1^st 2010 rating list with 2810 ahead of Topalov, Anand, Kramnik and Aronian. 

I'd like to bring forth all the other persons and organisations that have made significant contributions and deserve credit. The pitfall is of course that someone may feel left out, to whom I offer my sincere apologies in advance. 

Prior to Kasparov, Magnus has received support and training from GM Simen Agdestein through many years, and a special thanks for his invention, the chess class at the Top Athletes School that Simen started back in the late 90's and which Magnus attended through high school from 2006 to 2009.  

GM Peter Heine Nielsen is a good friend that had occasional training sessions with Magnus for several years and was also his second during many tournaments.  

His first important trainer was IM Torbjørn Ringdal Hansen who's pedagogical skills deserves special mentioning.
I'd also like to mention that Magnus got some initial coaching from Bjarte Leer Salvesen in Baerum Youth Chess Club and from Sverre Johnsen, Oslo Chess Club back in 1999. 

Before and during tournaments Magnus has also received valuable analysis from Dag Soedtholt and several other Norwegian chess players.

Chessbase, represented by founder Frederic Friedel, has for several years contributed with software including the invaluable Chessbase database and analysis engines Fritz, Junior and lately also Rybka. He has also been extremely helpful in providing important contacts throughout the chess world. 

Online chess was a major contributor to Magnus training efforts especially from the age of 9 to 14. He has spent countless hours playing blitz on Internet Chess Club (ICC) and Playchess.

We have received technical help in PC and software matters, and special thanks go to Tarjei Svendsen for his many contributions.

In addition to main sponsors Arctic Securities and Simonsen laywers, Magnus has for several years had Smartfish, a producer of Omega-3 fish oil products, as a sponsor.
For a one year period in 2007/8 he was sponsored by FAST, a search engine company now owned by Microsoft.
As part of their strategy to help young people utilize their talents, Microsoft Norway sponsored Magnus from 2003 to 2005.
His first sponsor, back in the first half of 2002, was IT consultant company Computas.
You have all contributed significantly to make it possible for Magnus to travel to tournaments, hire trainers and acquire training equipment. Thank you!

Espen Agdestein has been of invaluable help. As sponsor agent for Magnus, he has helped secure the current two main sponsors Arctic Securities and Simonsen lawyers. And together with his brother Simen he was instrumental in securing several of our earlier sponsors as well.  

Magnus' progress stems partly from participation in the many events organised by Hans Olav Lahlum at Gausdal. For many years Hans Olav put in countless hours, immense dedication and often his own money to continue the Gausdal tradition originally started and upheld for decades by Arnold Eikrem.  

After his first tournament, the Norwegian Championship U-11 in 1999, Magnus benefitted from the weekly blitz tournaments in Oslo Chess Club throughout the autumn of 1999 and onwards.
Our local club Baerum Youth Chess Club, headed by Oivind Ekeberg, was the first chess club contributing to Magnus' success.
Later Magnus joined Asker Chess Club, represented by primus motor Joeran Jansson and others, and played several seasonal evening tournaments, blitz events, as well as the European Club Cup for Asker. 

Magnus has participated in a huge number of tournaments and throughout the years he has on most occasions been accompanied to tournaments and looked after by grandparents, his mother and sisters in addition to the undersigned. 

Chess has been recognized as a sport by Norwegian media in 2009 and this is consistent with the need to focus on physical training and nutrition in chess as in other sports. Magnus has cooperated with the Olympiatoppen this autumn and feels confident this is an important part of optimum preparations for chess tournaments.  

We would also like to thank the many chess enthusiasts contributing to chess as spectators and commentators, his chess friends at NTG, tournament organisers (as Corus, Linares and Tromsoe to mention a few), chess sites (as www.chessbase.com), chess blogs (with significant contributions from for instance Hans Arild Runde and Mig Greengard) and the influential people, patrons and politicians throughout the world supporting our great game one way or the other. 

Henrik Carlsen
Engerdal, January 1^st 2010

Magnus played 4 tournaments in the 1^st quarter and 2 in the 2^nd quarter of 2009. He will be less active in 3^rd quarter with more tournaments coming up in the 4^th quarter again. 

Before turning to a follow-up of Sofia and Leon, I'd like to dwell briefly on the 1^st quarter super tournaments.
Despite the financial crises, traditional top level chess events have continued in 2009. The only notable difference seems to be that the crisis have made the organisers even more focused on presenting the best possible event to players, on-stage spectators,  via internet and for the media in general.  
Corus has a unique position in the chess world due to the 70 + year tradition, the presence of the whole world elite most years, and the huge number of players participating in the various tournaments.
Linares, 'the Wimbledon of chess', exudes brilliancy by being closely tied to the World Champion and 9 time winner Garry Kasparov. Amber Rapid and Blindfold has attracted the world elite for 20 years and is renowned for the luxurious standard in every aspect and the relaxed atmosphere accompanying a fast time control event without rating implications. 
This year they all seem to have managed to improve further!  

The financial challenges seemed to make the Corus organiser and management present during the event even more enthusiastic and helpful.
Linares staged the whole tournament locally this year after the successful cooperation with Morelia in 2006-8 and everything from the decoration of the playing venue to the helpfulness of the organisers made a lasting impression. Regarding Amber it was difficult to see how the organisers could improve further but somehow they managed! 

Magnus participated in Sofia for the first time, and despite his last round loss to tournament winner Shirov, he was very satisfied with his performance. In the second half he held Topalov and Ivanchuk to a draw with black in a convincing manner. His white piece victories against Dominguez and Wang Yue, added to his first round win against Topalov, gave him an impressive 4/5 score with white.
In the last round Magnus (and Shirov) thought black had amble compensation until he blundered with Qc7 (mistakenly thinking he had mate threats preventing Nb4). 
The Sofia organisers deserve the highest praise for a very well organised event. The hotel and the playing venue were excellent. The park area where the event was held had a great atmosphere with plenty of chess players grouped around the benches deeply emerged in their favourite pastime.
The city centre is compact, has many historical sights as well as modern buildings, and several new shopping malls.

Magnus played in a class cube for the second time, and in Sofia it was surrounded by a large group of enthusiastic and knowledgeable spectators following expert comments from female World Champion Stefanova and others.
The air conditioning worked excellently in the cube. The players could hear a little noise from outside occasionally, but not to the extent that it represented a real problem.
We think the cube is good idea and it has already succeeded in promoting chess in a great way.
Some practicalities may be improved further, including, even better noise protection, one-way glass to avoid contact from outside and maybe an inclined spectator area to allow more people direct vision. 

Magnus played in Leon 2005 in one of his first encounters with really top players. Although he had beaten Shirov in a single game in Drammen in January 2005, he was clearly no match for Anand in June 2005 and lost 3-1. But it was a useful experience, and it was a good backdrop for reflecting on his progress during the last 4 years having gone from a promising young player to the 3^rd rank position in the world. 

With semi-finals played on Friday and Saturday and the final on Sunday, the Leon Rapid tournament programme is not much of a burden for the losing semifinalists, it is reasonable for the Friday winner with his day off on Saturday, while quite tough for the Saturday winner.

Ivanchuk won fairly convincingly 2,5-1,5 in his semi against Morozevich, while Magnus needed more than 5 hours and 6 games to defeat Wang Yue on Saturday.
In the first game, Magnus missed a win in the endgame (he discovered too late that he should have prevented the black king from returning to the 7^th (and 8^th) rank.
In the second game he went for a very sharp line and later made too many ambitious (and not so good) moves and lost to a well-playing opponent.
In the third game he more or less had to win and amazingly Wang Yue did the same mistake in the opening as Anand did last year in the final he lost to Ivanchuk.
After drawing game 4, Magnus did not manage to get much from the opening in the first blitz game and it fizzled out in a draw.
In the final game, Magnus played quite well, but was still maybe slightly worse when Wang Yue made a mistake in the ensuing time trouble and later lost the difficult rook ending.  

The final against Ivanchuk brought all the nerve and excitement the audience could hope for. Lots of fighting chess with both playing some excellent chess mixed with some bad mistakes.
Having defended well, Magnus got the chance to counterattack in the 3^rd game and was trying to win the bishop endgame when he blundered his g-pawn. After another mistake he simply lost.
In a must win situation in the 4^th rapid game he got a very good position but from there on Ivanchuk defended excellently for 20 moves. Magnus missed a few promising continuations and in the end the queen and rook ending was probably theoretically drawn. In practice though, it is nearly hopeless for black as there as some many pits to fall into and so little time left on the clock. Ivanchuk erred with Kd6?, and the checks won the rook. 2-2.
In the first blitz game, Magnus got a promising position from the sharp Sveshnikov variation and looked great when he missed a winning continuation. Ivanchuk again defended superbly and reached a rook + knight against rook ending which he held for 53 moves ending in a stalemate.
In the second blitz game Ivanchuk held the dynamic balance my pushing his pawns on the kingside, but Magnus had an advantage and could have made it difficult with Ne4 instead of Nc4 as pointed out by Ivanchuk at the press conference. Draw.
In the Armageddon, Magnus drew the white pieces, 6 minutes against 5 and had to win.
Ivanchuk had a promising position for a while but when Magnus finally counterattacked the position was very difficult to defend. In a nice combination Magnus won a piece and when Ivanchuk's last piece was trapped he resigned with only a few seconds left. The Leon rapid has 4 participants as compared to the more typical 6, 8, 10 or 14 in classical high level tournament. Anyhow Magnus was very pleased to win Leon Rapid 2009, his first tournament victory in nearly a year (after being pretty close in Linares, Nice and Sofia).   
The Leon organiser does not escape our highest praise either :-)
 A very well organised event by Marcelino Sion with first class media coverage headed by famous journalist and commentator Leontxo Garcia, and lots of spectators in the large auditorium.
Leon is a nice city with plenty of cultural sights and park areas.
The devil is in the detail and the organiser excelled in many ways. For instance, when the hotel internet performed poorly they got Magnus a mobile internet card before we had even asked for one. Great job! 

Friday 12^th Magnus had his final high school exam and later that day he was celebrated as the "sport-student of the year" at the top athletes high school despite strong competition from a world class snowboarder and a junior world champion golf player.

Magnus is now planning to become a full time chess player for some time. 

He is leaving for Dortmund on June 30. Round 1 starts July 2^nd and the tournament finishes on July 12^th.
Format has changed from previous years, six players, double round robin and ten rounds this year.
Magnus (2772) is first seeded ahead of Kramnik, Jakovenko, Leko, Bacrot and Naiditch in the strong category 20 (nearly 21) event.   

Lommedalen, June 17^th 2009,
Henrik Carlsen

The halfway mark of the 2009 edition of Mtel Masters was celebrated with a football match at the Levski stadium, between Chess United and (former stars) of PFC Levski, the Bulgarian 25 time league champion.


All six Mtel Masters chess players participated in the football and the team was strengthened with young FM Berbatov (closely related to Man U's player with the same name). 



With some help from the Levski stars Chess United scored three goals in the final 2 minutes to level the score (6-6).

In the penalty shootout Ivanchuk again did a great job as goalkeeper and also scored on his (close-up) penalty.
It ended in an 8-7 victory to Chess United and everyone was delighted with both the match and the outcome.

The first half of Mtel Masters 2009 has seen lots of fighting chess, and with the 90/40 + 30/rest time control it is more of a coincidence to have had only 5 out of 15 decisive games. As a good example, Dominguez has played his usual sharp openings, has even had lost positions during the time trouble in at least 3 games, but has managed to save them all in the end by resourceful defence. 
Magnus and Shirov has been in the lead since their first round victories over Topalov and Ivanchuk, while Topalov has picked up speed winning in round 4 and 5 to join the leaders at the half way mark at +1.
Wang Yue and Dominguez are at 50% while Ivanchuk lingers at -3 having had as much headwind as he had tailwind last year (to reach 5 out of 5).
Yesterday he played a beautiful attacking game against Topalov, avoided repetition several times but blundered in time trouble and lost in the end. 

After a 7 weeks break from tournaments Magnus is happy to play here in Sofia.
He is satisfied with his shared lead halfway but not completely satisfied with his own play.  
The game against Topalov in round 1 was probably a good one. 23... Bxe4 was maybe the decisive mistake after which Magnus finished the game in style. In the end his king reached a safe heaven on g3 while there was no such place for black king. 1-0, and Magnus first victory against a 2800-player! 

Magnus played the Najdorf against Dominguez in round 2. White was better until 14.Bxd4?!. After 14...dxe5 15.dxe5 Qa5!, the position looked promising for black. Magnus tried hard but could not find anything decisive. Dominguez found the best defence and after simplifications he went for a repetition before the time control. (Interestingly he had the choice between checking the black king between g8 and h8 or 'checking' the black queen in the opposite corner!) Draw. 

After blundering badly in the two first games, Ivanchuk played quite well against Magnus. Magnus did not get anything from the opening, in the middle game he was maybe slightly better at one point (after e4), but even as he won a pawn in the time trouble Ivanchuk easily held the rook ending to a draw. 

Against Shirov, Magnus played the sharp Botvinnik variation in the Slav and thought he had a promising position out of the opening. However, when he played 24.Re3 he had missed 29...Ra5! after which white, if any, has the more difficult job to defend accurately.
A piece down for 3 pawns (including looming queens-to-be on f6 and h6), moves were repeated before the time control in face of the deadly black threat Qf3!  

Yesterdays game as black against Wang Yue was a bit of an anti-climax. White got a little initiative and could try to put some pressure on the black double b-pawn, but black probably has enough compensation in the bishop pair.
Moves were repeated before move 30 in a position Magnus considered equal. Afterwards, Magnus told the press that sometimes it is hard to avoid such results when you play black. 

Never having been to Sofia before, it is quite a revelation. The city centre is fairly modern, and the 1.3 million-inhabitants-city is nicely situated between various Balkan mountains reaching up to 2.300 meters. We see plenty of snow from the hotel window. (No need to feel homesick :-) ) 

The tournament is played in a glass cube in one of the main squares in Sofia, a popular attraction for spectators and passers-by. As in Bilbao, it is a little bit noisy inside the cube, but this is maybe a prize worth paying for bringing chess closer to the audience. 

Tomorrow Magnus has black against co-leader Topalov at 4 pm local time.

Sofia, May 18^th,
Henrik Carlsen

All aspects of the Amber tournament are of high quality, and the free day excursion to Cannes and the island St Honorat today was no exception. 
On the way along the coast line via Antibes we got an introduction to local history. The seaside location of towns like Nice has been both a blessing and a threat.
Back in 2003 Magnus played a round robin in magnificent Taormina in Sicily, and we leaned that it had been conquered by at least ten different folk groups since 600 B.C.
Conquerors have treated Nice slightly better, but it has had much the same history starting with the Greek seafarers followed by the Roman period and several folk groups during the dark ages.  


The Greeks brought vine and olive to Nice and the monastery of St Honorat makes it own products.
Upon arrival on the island we were treated with the 2007 red and white wines produced locally.
After a light lunch and a walk to the monastery and ferry back, we had one hour in Cannes before returning to Nice.
Impressively, nearly half the Amber participants had joined the excursion despite the relatively early start, and I think all enjoyed it very much in the perfect spring weather. 

After the first free day Kramnik was leading with +3, but during the next four double rounds, Anand has gone straight from 50% to +5 and looks like a clear favourite the was he is playing.
Kramnik, losing to Anand in the blindfold yesterday, is still at +3, while Magnus and Aronian are at +4 in shared second place.
Leko in 5^th at +1 is still in contention for the top places while the rest has a minus score with three double rounds to go. 

In round 5 against Aronian, Magnus played well in the blindfold as black and secured a draw in a sharp battle.
As white in the rapid, he outplayed black in the middle game, won a pawn and thought he was winning.
However, he took an additional exchange a bit too quickly, and the game became very complicated as his bishop was trapped on b8. Continuing to play for a win Magnus in the end lost.
After the long game he was both tired and a bit devastated by losing this way and hence being pushed back to 50%.
At this stage he showed great determination to start a new trend and decided to focus on playing quickly and staying relaxed in the next rounds.
In round 7 in a fairly equal position Wang Yue fell for a trick in the blindfold and Magnus subsequently won in style also in the rapid.
He was also very satisfied with his blindfold win over Morozevich the day before.
Against Topalov yesterday, the position he entered in the opening did not allow him to continue the strategy of playing fast. His position was 'loose' and he had to check it properly for every move.
Topalov played a bit hesitantly, but by the time Magnus got a clear advantage he was also down to increments in a complex position.
In the ensuing complications both players lost control. Magnus somewhat foolhardy avoided a repetition, but as Topalov blundered last, Magnus managed to win the game in the end.
In the rapid he had the black pieces and as he commented after the game, he had had enough excitement for one day and was inclined to play safe. Draw. 
Amazingly Magnus is currently at +5 and a one point lead in the blindfold while he has -1 and 7^th to 10^th place in the rapid. The surprisingly great difference must partly be explained by having had the margins on his side in the blindfold while clearly not so in the rapid. 

Tomorrow Magnus has the black pieces in the blindfold against Karjakin at 4 PM.
The day after, he plays Kramnik, and lastly Radjabov in the final round. 

Nice, March 23^rd 2009,
Henrik Carlsen

What some may consider good news and others as not so good, I won't be updating the blog very often in the months ahead. One reason is that Magnus has become more sensitive with regard to sharing information about his games, and he will in general not reveal more on the blog than what he does in video interviews after the game and in the occasional annotations of games. 
Back to Linares;
We would like to start by congratulating the 2009 winner Grischuk and equal first Ivanchuk!
Maybe somewhat surprising to some, Magnus was not in any way devastated by ending half a point shy of the winners after having blundered quite badly in a winning position in the penultimate round against Radjabov.
He is rather quite happy with having played many really good games and with the +1 result and sole 3^rd place, despite the loss of concentration and some half points in the 5^th or 6^th hour of play.
He emerged from the openings without any serious problems as black, and he got many good positions with white although he was out-prepared by Dominguez and Aronian.
He beat World Champion Vishy Anand for the first time with classical time control and also won their "match" 1,5-0,5.
It was also absolutely noteworthy that he beat the winner A.Grischuk (also for the first time with classical time control) in a great Sicilian, causing Grischuk's only Linares loss in 2009.
The tournament showed that Magnus has again expanded his opening repertoire.
And despite some opening problems in two games as white, as well as two major endgame blunders, he performed according to his January 1^st 2009 rating, and expects to be ranked 3^rd in the world on April 1, 2009! 

Six out of the eight Linares participants had played in Corus this year, and Magnus has scored better than any of the others in the two events combined (+2)!   
As a last note on Linares, we'd like to thank the organiser for another excellent top event.
It was well organised, in a most friendly atmosphere, and everything ran smoothly. Thank you! 

Having waited for the release of the audio files from the December 27^th video conference on World Championship cycles in vain for more than two months some news finally emerged from FIDE early this week.
During the last weekend of Linares, the FIDE Presidential Board met and the press release did contain news about the World Championship cycles.
The Anand-Topalov match has been deferred to latest April 2010 and UEP's bid for the next World Championship cycle was accepted.
What is amazing about the press release is the lack of information regarding changes to the World Championship Regulations which the acceptance of the UEP bid must rest upon.
If the regulations indeed were changed to accommodate the acceptance of the UEP bid for a candidate tournament / matches (and the 2011 World Championship match), with the candidates replacing the current stipulated match between the GP and World Cup winners, this could well have been worth mentioning in the press release.
For one thing, we imagine that the GP participants in Nalchik would like to know the status of the World Championship regulations after several months of frustrating uncertainty. It could also have provided a tiny bit of much needed credibility to FIDE despite the appalling act of introducing a change to the regulations in the middle of the cycle.
Alternatively, the possibility that the PB did not formally decide to change the WC Regulations and FIDE is planning to let the GP participants play another event without alignment between regulations and what FIDE is actually planning to do, would simply be beyond belief, and will hopefully be disproved shortly.         

Today the 18^th edition of the Amber Rapid & Blindfold started. This great event, organised with the courtesy of Mr. and Mrs. van Oostrom, is staged for the second time in a row in the exquisite Palais de la Mediterranee in Nice. The 2009 edition is stronger than ever with the top 5 and 10 out of the world top 13 ranked players.
The drawing of lots and opening dinner was held in the grand hall of hotel Negresco yesterday.
Having drawn start number 12, Magnus played Gata Kamsky in round 1, and in an interesting position in the blindfold game, Gata blundered a piece and Magnus finished the game without allowing much counterplay.
As black in the rapid game, Magnus was maybe slightly worse most of the game and having spent too much time in the middle game, he was down to increments in the endgame.
In a worse, but maybe drawn queen ending, Magnus lost on time. 1-1 in round one.
Two of the other blindfold winners, Anand and Kramnik also lost the rapid (to Leko and Morozevich).
Only Aronian managed to win both games (against Ivanchuk) and is the sole clear leader a whole point ahead of ten players at one out of two points. 

The weather is great in Nice, sunshine and +15oC. 

Tomorrow Magnus plays black against Ivanchuk in the blindfold at 2:30 PM and he'll have white in the rapid at 17:45. 

Nice, March 14^th 2009,
Henrik Carlsen 

Today is a free day in Linares, and the organiser has most accommodatingly arranged for a game of tennis in the beautiful spring weather.
The timing is excellent as today is also a free day in the Nordic skiing World Championship which Magnus follows with great interest (although his enthusiam does not match the level of Peter Svidlers passion for cricket:-) 

In the first four rounds Magnus has been focused and spent more time on the clock than what we have become used to. He has fought well in every game, but has made too many oversights to be fully content with his play and result.
 With 10 rounds to go he is quite relaxed though. 

In round 2 as white against Dominguez Magnus went into a line of deep preparation from Dominguez.
Having spent lots of time investigating the critical line with e4 which would allow black to chase the white king into the middle of the board, Magnus wisely concluded that he should go for the repetition. 

As black against Wang Yue in round 3, Magnus equalised from the opening. As white did not show any ambition to play for a win, Magnus made several attempts to get an advantage. 
18...Na5 instead of Ke7 looked very promising, but later white defended well at the critical moments.
Magnus still felt he had a slight edge both before and after a rook was exchanged close to the time control.
White offered a draw at move 37, but Magnus decided to play on.
Unfortunately he missed 40.Rc5!, blundering the a-pawn just before the time control, and he had to pull himself together and concentrate on securing a draw.
In the end moves were repeated as white correctly concluded that pushing for a win with the a-pawn could easily backfire and lose. 

Yesterday Ivanchuk played a side-line in the Grunfeld with 5.... Be6 and Magnus again spent lots of time in the opening. When black avoided the most critical line (11.... Nxe4), Magnus was simply better after the opening.
He decided on 16.Nd5 and had a slight advantage due to his more active pieces.
However, 22.Bc4 was a mistake, and after the response e5! Magnus discovered that black has 24.... Qxd4 after which white has to trade off most of the pieces.
Black is slightly better in the ending, but as white has more than sufficient resources, Ivanchuk decided to trade knights and enter a dead drawn rook ending.
With the resulting draw both players have 2/4 and share 4^th - 5^th place thus far. 
Anand has had three white's and has had winning positions in all three!
Against Aronian the position was very tricky and he went on to blunder at a critical moment and lose though.
As black against Dominguez in round 3 he did not seem to be in any serious danger, and yesterday he convincingly grind down Wang Yue to move back to +1.  

Aronian played patiently against Dominguez yesterday and slowly outplayed him to win a pawn and later a second one. Dominguez wisely decided to fight on and Aronian somewhat surprisingly seemed to have serious problems finding the win with R+N+ two pawns against R+N.
Finally he embarked on the right plan and after the exchange of rooks the knight ending is lost for black. 1-0, and an impressive 3 out of 4 for Aronian.
He is sharing the lead with A.Grichuk who has started very well. Despite 3 black games, and getting into slight time trouble nearly every game, he has played and scored excellently.
Yesterday he got some help though, as Radjabov misplayed a seemingly very good position to end up in a lost endgame.  

In round 5 Magnus face co-leader Grischuk with the black pieces at 4 PM. Lets hope for a good fight!   

Henrik Carlsen

Linares, February 23rd, 2009

Magnus (and I) arrived in Linares early in the morning on the 18^th and had a full day to relax before the opening ceremony last night.
Despite participating in Linares both in 2007 and 2008, this is the first time we experience the opening ceremony in Linares. It was a very impressive performance staged in the playing venue, the Theatro Cervantes, in the centre of Linares.
The piano and guitar duo has toured most of the world and showed us why they are so popular. A great performance!
The drawing of lots came off to a humorous start as Anand, as the first to chose among 8 olive tree placates, picked number 1, and next Aronian picked number 2. Magnus came next and picked number.... 7. (He probably wanted black against Aronian in round 1 as in Bilbao in September 2008 :-)
My understanding of Spanish is still hopelessly inadequate, but I think major Fernandez mentioned the possibility staging the 2010 version of Linares in two venues, possibly in the Emirates this time. 

Despite Topalov withdrawing due to the match against Kamsky, the rating average in Linares 2009 is a record 2757 (category 21), featuring V.Anand (2791), Ivanchuk (2779), Magnus (2776), Radjabov (2761), Aronian (2750), Wang Yue (2739), A. Grischuk (2733) and L.Dominguez Perez (2717).  

The tournament is played between February 19^th and March 7^th, with free days on February 23^rd, 27^th and March 4^th. All rounds starts at 4 PM. 
It'll be a very challenging tournament. Compared to the already strong and long Corus tournament this year, the rating average is significantly higher, there is one more round with the same number of free days, and draw offers are not allowed until move 30. 

Magnus faced Aronian in round 1 and drew without too much problems when moves were repeated just before the time control.
Anand won against Radjabov to take the sole lead as Dominguez-Grischuk and Yue-Ivanchuk ended in draws as well. 

Tomorrow Magnus has the white pieces against Dominguez.                                 

Henrik Carlsen,
Linares, February 19th, 2009

During the Corus tournament, representatives from the main sponsor Corus, as well as from the organiser, brought up the issue of the financial crisis on several occasions. Responding to their own rhetoric question about organising the chess festival in such difficult times, the answer was a resounding YES!
Thank you!
And thank you also for confirming to continue the Corus Chess festival tradition until at least 2013! 

As you know Magnus went "all in" as black against Wang Yue in the last round. He declined a draw offer after 18 moves and developed a strong initiative on the queenside, but subsequently blundered several times in the continuation.
In a long interview with ICC chessblog, he explained in more detail the development of the game and how he lost in the end to take shared 5^th overall with 7/13 points. 

Congratulations to Karjakin for taking sole first place in Corus A.

And congratulations also to B and C group winners Caruana and Wesley So!

Henrik Carlsen,
February 19th, 2009

In the previous years we have experienced quite a lot of rain and wind in Wijk aan Zee. Just at the moment when we where starting to realize that this could something normal and not just tough luck, Wijk has been extraordinary pleasant this year.
Lots of sun, not much wind, a real treat for someone from the north!  

As parents we've always maintained that Magnus should focus on having fun, learning and on doing his best, and not on results, but by now we have of course realized that there is quite a lot of focus on results from the outside world. Maybe not surprising when you are a top5 chessplayer at 18 and one of the pre-tournament favourites, but anyhow a mixed blessing for a young player. 

This week Magnus is happy to have played some good games and to have won two. The tournament situation is quite unique with 6 players tied for first before the last round! 

On Wednesday Magnus played white against Dominguez and felt satisfied with the opening. He knew they followed the game Jakovenko-Mamedyarov from Elista, December 2008, and when he found the improvement 15.Qb3 he thought he was better.
Dominguez made his trade-mark response, took a lot of time, calculated extremely well, and came up with a good and active continuation, including 18...Nb4 and 19...b5!
Magnus was a bit uncertain where he went wrong, and when he had missed 22....Qb7! he realized that his opening advantage had disappeared.
However, Magnus turned down a draw offer and started to exploit the complex position and the time advantage. Black continued to find good responses and was maybe even slightly better until 29....Rbd8. If he had played Qd5 instead it would have been difficult for white to continue to play for a win, but after 31.Rb5! white is better. After 33.Rb7! white is simply winning. Magnus took his time and found the winning sacrifice on e5 after which black could not stop the mating threats. 1-0.

Aronian won again to take the sole lead at +3 ahead of Karjakin at +2 and Magnus on shared 3^rd to 6^th at +1. After another great free day and a good game of football Magnus was very focused on playing a good game as black against Morozevich in round 11.
He played 4....d5 in the Nimzo-Indian and they followed Morozevich' game against Adams until white improved with 16.Rc1.
Magnus found nice subtle moves  like h6 and a6 (which was good dispite playing a5 next) and later played actively to compensate for his isolani on d5. He never felt in any real trouble, and was hoping that white would become aggressive. However, tail-ender Morozevich seemed to be in damage-control mode and did not take any serious risks. White offered draw after 28.Rd4, but Magnus decided to play on. Although he foresaw that it would be difficult to create real problems for white due to the perpetual threats, he did come up with a few interesting ideas and white had to avoid some tactical pitfalls. Short on time white found 35.Bf4 and 37.Bh6+ forcing black to go for a perpetual in the end. Draw. 

Dominguez beat Anonian, Kamsky beat Karjakin, and Radjabov and Movsesian both won as an interesting overtyre to the final weekend.
With two rounds to go we had 4 leaders and Magnus and Karjakin half a point behind. 

Today Magnus felt he had to win as white against Smeets, and his opening choice was intended to challenge black both on the clock and getting him into unknown territory.
Smeets kept the balance until move 21 but spent too much time on the clock. Suddenly it started to go down-hill for every move, and soon Magnus knew his was winning.
In the final position, the material situation is still balanced but black cannot defend against the threats against d5, c7 etc.
With only seconds left Smeets resigned. 1-0.

Karjakin presented an interesting opening novelty against Adams. He was clearly better after the opening and proceeded to win in style.
With all the 4 leaders drawing today, we suddenly have Magnus, Radjabov, Aronian, Karjakin, Dominguez and Movsesian at 7 points.
In the last round in group A we will have a co-leader playing on 5 out of the 7 boards! 

Magnus plays black against Wang Yue. Yue played an impressive 80+ games in a row without a loss last year, but here in Wijk he has been pretty shaky and lost three out of his five white games. 

Short and Kasimdzhanov are leading the B-group with 8 points with Caruana and Volokitin in hot pursuit at 7,5.

15 year old W. Soo with an impressive 9/12, is a full point ahead of even younger A.Giri in group C.
Congratulations to the latter on securing his final GM norm! 

Henrik Carlsen
Wijk, January 31st, 2009

A childhood fascination of mine was the Viking story by Snorre Sturlasson about our first king Harald Hårfagre (Fairhair).
At young age he was the heir to some scattered kingdoms in Vestfold located by the Oslofjord.
When he was rejected due to lack of might when proposing to Gyda Eiriksdatter (the daughter of king Eirik of Hordaland, a southwestern part of Norway), he swore that he would not cut his hair until he had united Norway. Fighting all the other local Norwegian kings he finally succeeded after 10 years and was the undisputed king of Norway from about 872 ac (when he won the battle of Hafrsfjord).
He subsequently cut his hair, married Gyda and ruled Norway for more than 60 years!

After some initial draws by Magnus I contemplated to threaten to stop blogging until Magnus achieved a decisive result (choosing the blog as weapon as my current hair growth doesn't lend much credibility to any threats in that direction).
Anyway, below you'll find a few comments about round 6 to 9.

In round 6 against Karjakin Magnus came very close to scoring his first victory despite having a complete off-day. Magnus played imaginatively on the kingside but felt that he couldn't calculate a single line properly. He unfortunately missed some fairly obvious winning continuations to reach a drawn double rook ending.

The day after as black against Loek Van Wely he was nearly as close to a decisive result (but this time a loss). Magnus had taken some risks early in the game to keep it complicated. He very much wanted to win and thought he had a reasonable position throughout the game. When he played the dubious 27... Bf2? he still thought he was okay as he had miscalculated one of the possible ensuing lines.
Fortunately for Magnus, at this stage Loek made his only serious mistake by playing 28.Red1? instead of Re2 in ensuing time trouble. When Magnus found g6! it was white who had to avoid the worst pitfalls to reach a drawn ending.

In round 8 Magnus found an interesting pawn sacrifice 9.e4! as white in a Slav opening against Kamsky when the latter had played the somewhat unusual 7....Nbd7.
In the continuation Kamsky wisely turned down the second pawn offered by Magnus and found a way of blocking the a3-f8 diagonal so that he could castle in the end.
At this stage Magnus considered his position equal or worse, and not feeling exactly perky he offered an early draw which Kamsky immediately accepted.

On the free day we had absolutely beautiful spring weather (at least for a Norwegian) and several GM group players, including Magnus, enjoyed a game of football at the school court situated nearby.

Today in round 9 Magnus was black against Adams against whom he has a terrific score winning many games in a row with white and drawing with black.
Against 1.e4 Magnus played the Sicilian Dragon, and Adams avoided complications with 7.0-0 to reach a positional middle game.
Magnus took control of the c-file but couldn't make 17... Rc5 work and played Re8 instead.
After 18.Ra4 the position is probably quite equal.
When Magnus broke with e5! and could double his rook and queen in the e-file the position is a bit tricky for white. However, Adams found 23.Qd1 and the only-move 26.Qd5 after which Magnus had to swop queens to avoid being worse.
The ensuing two-piece ending is fairly equal. Both players can set up a kind of fortress and Magnus offered a draw after 28....Kf8. If white declines and try to win the d-pawn with Bc7?, black would in fact have been clearly better. Adams certainly saw this "trap" and he accepted the draw offer instead.

A couple of hours into the round, most of the games in the A-group looked drawish today, but in the end all the three long games were decided.
Aronian, Dominguez and Karjakin all won to reach +2 and shared lead ahead of Movsesian and Radjabov at +1 and Magnus (with 9 draws) is shared 6-9 at 50% with 4 rounds to go.

Tomorrow Magnus plays white against Dominguez. Let's hope for a good fight!

Henrik Carlsen Wijk,
January 27th, 2009

While round 4 brought 7 draws in the A-group, there was plenty of blood shed in round 5.
Home favourite Van Wely continued his principled discussion of the KID with Radjabov and succeeded brilliantly this time. The position after 20 moves is apparently not new, but a few moves later black was beyond hope and resigned at move 31.
Dominguez brought home his first victory against hapless Morozevich who has three black losses so far.
A healthy pawn up Dominguez found a nice and decisive combination to finish the game. 
Aronian grind down Movsesian and Karjakin did the same to Stellwagen to secure 4 white wins in A today. 
Magnus surprised Ivanchuk playing a sideline in the Ruy Lopez (9...a5). After Na3 white was maybe slightly better, but as Ivanchuk admitted after the game, he had missed 14....Ra8! more or less solving blacks problems.
Magnus found another only-move with 16...c5 and when Ivanchuk chose to allow the closure of the queenside, the internet audience seemed to favour white.
Ivanchuk for a while thought he was better, but after blacks sacrifice 18...Nxe5 with the plan to bring his queen to g6 black is at least equal. White discovered the potential problems and found the defence 20.Nfd2 fxe4 21.Qh5 which says a lot about his unique chess understanding.
Magnus could not find anything better than Be8 Qe2 Bd7 Qh5 Be8 etc during the game, but later he has been made aware of the alternative Rf5! Instead of Be8 which may have made the plan Qd8-e8-g6 possible after all. 
In any case he was not unhappy with the result as black against Ivanchuk. 

Karjakin is the sole leader with 3.5/5 ahead of Smeets, Dominguez, Aronian and Kamsky at 3 points in the A-group.
Magnus has 2,5 points and tomorrow he has white against leader Karjakin.
Lets hope for a good and interesting fight! 

Henrik Carlsen,
Wijk aan Zee, January 22st, 2009

Just at the blogging update regularity was beginning to improve slightly, the internet connection at the hotel has been very very slow for the last few days. With the press room available over at the playing venue it is not a watertight excuse, but it is the best I've got:-)

Except for the games of Ivanchuk and Morozevich, most other players have mainly resorted to draws so far. 

In round 2 against Stellwagen, Magnus surprised his opponent in the opening playing the Berlin Defence and equalised from the opening despite the white initiative. When he played Bd6 he saw the drawing line ending with Rd7 but could not find a better alternative.
With white low on time already Magnus decided to avoid the repetition and retreated his bishop to f6 despite being worse as he did not see a winning continuation for white.
Stellwagen continued to exploit his initiative and Magnus was left to defend and in the end a draw was agreed. 
Ivanchuk and Morozevich fought back winning against Yue and Van Wely while leaders Smeets and Karjakin drew. 

In round 3 Magnus had white against Movsesian. He seemed to get a slight initiative from the opening but Movsesian played very accurately. Black had a safe heaven for his king on e6 and after exchanging queens the ending was easily drawn.
Ivanchuk and Morozevich both lost again, the former in a terrible time scramble against Radjabov's famous KID and the latter against a ruthlessly effective Kamsky. 
Movsesian beat Adams to join the (many) leaders at 2/3. 

Yesterday Magnus had another white, this time opposite Aronian, someone whom Magnus has enjoyed a very good score against since the Candidates in May 2007.
After the opening Magnus was happy with his position. He was better and it is not obvious how black should solve his problems.
Magnus decided to allow the black sacrifice Nxe3 as he (correctly) thought it would be clearly better for white.
After fxe3 Rxe3 white has two alternatives; Bd3 or Rd3. Magnus thought both alternatives were about equally good for white, and he went for Rd3 to avoid having a black rook sitting on e3.
But, he had missed blacks move Qxb4 capturing a third pawn for the sacked knight.
The next few moves where probably slightly dubious from both sides and due to the bind on f1 Magnus had to find and make Rxb6 work to maintain an advantage. He thought the endgame should be winning for white, but Aronian defended tenaciously. When Magnus had to give up his h-pawn the winning chances disappeared. In retrospect Magnus is starting to doubt that there ever was a win in the ending.
All A-group games ended draw despite fierce fighting on many boards.   

The long game meant going straight to the sponsor dinner in the Chess Pavilion. We had an excellent meal and as usual it was followed by a simul between a young player and Corus managers and organisers. 

In the morning before round 4 Signe and I had used the nice weather to walk over to the channel leading into Amsterdam. The sea waves caused by the strong western wind, the monumental mile long pier, the broad channel and the sluices bringing the vessels down (!) 3 or 4 meters to the river beneath sure is an impressive sight!  

Magnus has had some long games already and will enjoy the free day today before facing up to Ivanchuk as black in round 5 tomorrow.

Henrik Carlsen,
Wijk aan Zee, January 21st, 2009

Bottom seeded Jan Smeets beat Ivanchuk with black! Okay, Ivanchuk lost on time on move 40, but black was certainly not worse in the end position.
In fact the day could easily have been a complete success for the Dutch players as Stellwagen had a winning position against Movsesian and Van Wely was much better against Dominguez. Both games ended draw though with Stellwagen accepting the draw in beginning time trouble after some dubious moves and Dominguez defending very well till the end. 


Against Teimur Radjabov Magnus played 1.e4 and was met with c5 2.Nf3 e6.
He felt in a creative mood and thought 3.g3 was an interesting way of deferring d4. Both players, and especially Radjabov, spent lots of time on the clock in the opening.
Magnus thought he was clearly better already after 7... Be7 8.cxd5 Bxc5.
He kept building up the pressure against the centre with the black king still on e8 and thought 14.Bxd5 would give white an advantage but that Bh6 would be even better.
After having moved, he discovered that the planned continuation was unclear due to 14...Nxe5 15.Bxg7 Nd3!
White still had an advantage in the game after 15.Rd1, but it is small. 
With his poor pawn structure, black continued to face problems throughout his long time trouble, but found a good defence to reach a double rook and two versus three pawn ending.
Magnus played on for a while, but Radjabov found a nice way of securing the draw with 53... Rg6 54.g4 Ra3 and a draw was agreed after move 60. 

Young Karjakin has struggled lately but got off to an excellent start beating Morozevich with white in a sharp Sicilian.
Black seemed okay and may even have been the one playing for a win. Then he played d5 at the wrong moment allowing 26.h6!! winning on the spot. 
The rest of the games in the A-group ended in draws.

Most of the favourites won in the B-group (Kasimdzhanov, Vallejo, Efimenko and Navara). Short drew while Motylev lost (to Navara). 
In the C-group, 15 year old top seed Wesley So beat Nijboer with black and is sharing the lead with Bosboom, Romanishin, Harika and Iturrizaga. 

Another peace of news hitting the headlines today was the cancellation of the Karlovy Vary Grand Prix tournament scheduled for December 2009. The reasons given were the withdrawal of Magnus and the change of the regulations for the cylce.
Not very surprising, the steps FIDE is taking, supposedly to strengthen the Grand Prix, have had the opposite effect. If the real purpose of the cycle change was to discredit and harm the Grand Prix, they have been quite successful. 

We're still waiting for the release of the transcript of the phone conference of December 27^th, but FIDE is completely silent on the subject.        

Tomorrow Magnus plays the black pieces against Stellwagen at 13:30. As there is a significant penalty for arriving late for the round, we may expect all games to start on time.
 
Henrik Carlsen,
Wijk aan Zee, January 17th, 2009

Magnus, (his youngest sister Signe and myself) arrived in Wijk aan Zee at the coast of Holland after a pleasant flight with SAS from Oslo to Amsterdam yesterday for the first event of the Corus tournament; the traditional "Meet & Greet" and the drawing of lots for Grandmaster Group C in the Hotel Zeeduin.
Magnus was welcomed "home" by several of the organisers, and it should not be taken too lightly taking into account how his rise to chess fame kick-started back in 2004 with the C-group victory.
He's here for the sixth time in a row and will have spent nearly a third of a year in Wijk by the end of this tournament. 


The opening ceremony of the 71^st (!!) edition was held in the refurbished Chess Pavilion in the centre of Wijk today, as usually excellently hosted by organising committee chairman Dolf Vos, tournament director Jeroen van den Berg and Corus executive Theo Henrar (picture). 

The drawing of lots was performed in a new and entertaining way.
On a computer chess board, 14 squares were highlighted by alternating lighting, each hiding a number from 1 to 14. The players in turn pressed a big red button after which the "spinning wheal" of lighted squares slowed down to stop at one of the 14 squares and the starting number was revealed.


The B-group is unusually strong this year with Sasikiran (2711) and Vallejo Pons above 2700 followed by many strong GrandMasters.

In the A group Ivanchuk started by drawing number 4.


Next Magnus went up and waited attentative for his "choice"....
The number 2 came up and he will have 7 games with the white pieces and 6 as black. 


He'll be white against T.Radjabov in round 1 tomorrow at 13:30 followed by black against Stellwagen and white against Movsesian and Aronian before the first free day. 


Before the opening ceremony sister Signe tasted the exquisite Corus 2009 Chess chocolate! 

Due to the relatively large variance in rating within the A group this year, the tournament is a category 19 event with an average rating of 2716. This should not deceive anyone. With 5 of the world top-10 players present (based on the latest January 1^st 2009 FIDE rating list) and several other strong contenders, it will be a very tough tournament. 

The weather in Wijk aan Zee is very good. A few degrees about zero, light clouds and not too windy. We will certainly enjoy our stay. 

Henrik Carlsen
Wijk aan Zee, January 16th, 2009

Today Magnus is up at Hamar at the annual Norwegian Sports award.
Hamar is situated at the eastern shore of Mjøsa opposite Gjøvik where Magnus played last weekend. The two cities co-hosted the 1994 Olympics together with reknown Lillehammer (located at the northern end of Mjøsa). 

Reporting from Gjøvik is long overdue as I was waiting for the chance to comment also on the release of the December 27^th teleconference audio transcript.
A fortnight has elapsed since the conference and one may unfortunately begin to doubt the reality of the written guarantee to make the conference generally available on internet.  
(Supposedly the quality of the audio tape is poor, next time I'll tape it myself :-) 

We would like to congratulate Peter Svidler with the victory in the Aker Chess Challenge!
He beat Magnus in the final. Magnus drew comfortably as black but when pressing for a win with white he missed Bb6! in the time trouble and was suddenly lost.
Consequently Magnus did not get revenge for his loss to Peter up at Svalbard 3 years ago, but the good news was that he dominated Peter in their internal encounters (beating him twice with white in the qualifier and the tie-break and experiencing no real difficulties with black). 
The visitors and internet audience got a great show the last day of the qualifier. Magnus, in a must win-situation managed to outplay Svidler with white. Nakamura played an exchange variation as white against Magnus and offered a draw after 12 moves trusting his blitz skills. And when Peter won his games against Kjetil (who again had a nice position in the middle game), there was a three way tie.
Svidler won the first blitz game against Nakamura in style and Magnus played another good game as white in the Ruy Lopez beating Svidler.
Nakamura of course had to win the third game against Magnus and sacked a pawn in the Slav for long term compensation. Magnus was in control but late in the middle game he allowed Namakura into the game. Fortunately the American did not find the best continuation and in the time scramble Magnus won to reach the final against Peter. 

We would like to congratulate 18-year old Jon Ludvig Hammer!
Not only did he secure his 4^th and decisive GM norm in the strong Open at Gjøvik, but he took a clear 1^st after beating GM Bartel with black in the last round. A draw was enough to secure his GM title, and it was very impressing to see him play on in the slightly better queen ending for about two hours to win in the end.

Next Thursday Magnus is off to Wijk aan Zee and the Corus A. In the absence of Anand, Topalov  (and Kramnik), Magnus together with Ivanchuk, Morozevich and 2008 winner Aronian, are probably the main favourites.
Magnus is certainly looking forward to the tournament, and he is quite confident after his performance at Gjøvik despite loosing the final as he played many good games.     

Henrik Carlsen
Lommedalen, January 10th, 2009

Gjoevik chess club celebrated its 100 year anniversary in 2008.
Back in 1983 the 75-year anniversary was celebrated with a top level event which included former World Champion Boris Spasskji,and it represented a break through for Simen Agdestein, 16 at the time.
The main organiser back in '83 was the same Øystein Brekke as today. For the younger organiser and arbiter (and historian and writer)  Hans O. Lahlum, the '83 tournament maybe served as a key stimuli to take up chess.

The municipality of Gjøvik is actively hosting sports events these days, and later this winter the national cross country skiing championship as well as indoor climbing championship will be held at Gjøvik.

On Thursday, after the initial 2 rounds of the Aker Chess Challenge, the second mayor of Gjøvik hosted a visit to the great ice hockey stadium located in an enormous rock cavern excavated for the 1994 Olympics (at Lillehammer) followed by a gourmet dinner at the Brusveen mansion (owned by Mustad Industries).



Afterwards the players received a nice glass vase from the municipality.

Having started well with a win against Lie and a draw with black against Svidler, Magnus lost round 3 as white against Nakamura. Despite another win against Lie, Magnus is in a must win position today as he most probably needs 1,5 points against Svidler and Nakamura to advance to the final. Svidler has 3/4 followed by Magnus and Nakamura at 2.5.

In the main Open tournament 8 players share the lead with 4/5 while there are several Norwegian players at 3.5 and 3 points.

Henrik Carlsen,
Lommedalen, January 4th 2009

Looking back at 2008 it has been a tremendous success for Magnus chesswise.
Climbing to # 4 on the rating list (Oct 1 2008 and Jan 1 2009) and even enjoying 5 days as the unofficial # 1 during Bilbao, winning Corus (shared), Baku (shared) and Foros, and taking second place in Linares and Bilbao, he has every reason to be happy and proud of his achievements.
Having continuously adjusted his ambitions on his way up, he is not fully satisfied with his performances in the 2^nd half of 2008. The good thing is that it may slightly reduce expectations and put him back in "an attacking position", where he has proven to be very comfortable in the past. 

His first quarter program is again very tight this year, starting with the rapid tournament "Aker Chess Challenge" between Magnus, Svidler, Nakamura and K.Lie at Gjøvik tomorrow, followed by Corus A starting January 16^th (opening ceremony).

Magnus is already at Gjøvik where the drawing of lots and a press conference will be held tonight.
The format will be similar to Mainz Rapid with a double round robin qualifier Friday to Sunday and Final / Bronze finals Monday 5th. 
The main Open event, with European Champion S.Tiviakov as the top rated participant, is well under way. As are other parallel events, and this weekend the annual Open Norwegian Rapid championship will be held as another part of the broad festival at Gjøvik.
Main organisers Øystein Brekke and Hans O.Lahlum deserves the highest praise for organising such a great festival in Norway. Thank you!  

The intended change of the 2008-2011 World Championship Cycle has been met by a lot of protests and responding to this, the FIDE President invited some of the highest rated players in the world to take part in a Skype phone conference on December 27^th.
Magnus asked me to take part on his behalf, and as he has already withdrawn from the Grand Prix, we decided to focus on World Championship cycles in general. 
Prior to the conference we were informed in writing that the recording will be made available to all the internet "journals"... who can reproduce it in full as a voice or transcript it if they wish.
As this may take some time, we have decided to include our statement at the conference below; 

"  (Dear FIDE dignitaries, dear World Champion, dear top Grand Masters,)
I'm representing my son Magnus Carlsen and would like to thank you for this opportunity to express our views on the world championship cycle. As communicated earlier we would like to see transparent decision processes within FIDE, and predictability and fairness in the world championship cycles. 
Transparent decision processes require a democratic and open dialogue with the parties involved prior to making decisions. Important issues need to be raised well in advance of major decision points and the decision process needs to be well documented and communicated timely and widely. The process of proposing to change the current cycle as brought forward at the FIDE General Assembly in Dresden last month on short notice, does not meet these requirements.  
Predictability is necessary to ensure the trust and commitment of chess players, chess federations, sponsors, organisers and top players in contention for the World Championship title.
We need to introduce mutually binding agreements in line with the practice in other top chess tournaments.
The current practice of having one-sided escape clauses in the championship regulations and/or players undertaking, for instance stating that the FIDE Presidential Board or the FIDE President may change this or that, is simply unacceptable.
The many examples from recent years of players that has qualified or is in the process of qualifying for a subsequent step in the championship cycle or for a match, experiencing multiple delays or downright removal of rights, must come to an end.
Regarding priorities, the focus on money and privileges must be replaced by fairness, reliability and predictability.
As many businesses around the world has experienced, if you want economics results you have to excel in what you deliver to your customers and your audience. The results will follow suit.   
Fairness; what does this imply? In addition to having predictability, there should not be arbitrary granting of privileges, well, as few privileges as possible really. In the future Magnus would like to see a world championship cycle with a minimum of privileges, or no privileges at all. If any it should be early in the cycle and based on rating and not money.
The transition to such a situation has been difficult in the past due to the legacy of our history.
We strongly disagree with the way FIDE has tried to remedy this by handing out further privileges.
After the unification process from 2005 to 2008, we may be in a unique situation to transcend historical problems and privileges, and it was with disbelief and disappointment we received the news about the proposal to introduce new privileges by creating 4 new spots in the next step of the 2008-2011 championship cycle. 

Next let me mention some features we would like to advocate related to a world championship cycle;
Firstly let's talk about privileges;
What about privileges related to rating? Well, maybe some places in a knock-out stage could be allocated to top rated players as done in the World Cup for many years.
What about the privileges of players backed by strong managers, sponsors or organisers? We don't believe in these as it promotes cronyism and makes it possible to buy your way to important rights.
What about the privileges of the reigning World Champion? This is a difficult question but we see strong arguments for reducing the privileges drastically or even abolishing them outright. In the past, with the right to a re-match, a reigning world champion had about 75% chance of retaining the title against an evenly strong opponent, leaving only 25% chance for all the remaining chess players in the world. It was ridiculous. Even without rematches, the 50% chance of today is strongly favouring the reigning champion. This may have made sense in the past when there were few serious contenders for the title, but today, with about 30 top players within 100 rating points of the top, this is no longer fair. 
Next, let's discuss the cycle;
The first step needs to be accessible to as many players as possible world wide. Both zonal tournaments and the regional qualifiers for the World Cup have worked well and one of these practices may be continued in the future.
Next Magnus favours a knock-out system with for instance 64 or 128 players mainly coming from the preceding step. When there are 8 players left in the knock-out stage, various alternatives are possible and we would like to mention three viable options;
- The first is to continue with the knock-out matches, and the final winner is the new World Champion.
- Another alternative is to proceed with candidate matches between the 8 remaining players at other venues and shifted in time. After two rounds of candidate matches, the two remaining players would fight for the world championship title.
- A third good alternative is to stage a double round robin World Championship tournament between the 8 remaining players from the knock-out cup.The World Champion would retain his (or her) title for two years until the next champion is decided.
Now, you may object and ask us; what is new? This is what has been tried for more than10 years without much success, isn't it?
Well, the main point is that it did not work as long as Kasparov and later Kramnik were outside the FIDE cycle. Currently this is no longer a problem. The chess world has been united and the only privileges we need to care about are those of World Champion Anand, who had to win both the 2007 world championship tournament and the somewhat questionable 2008 match, and the other is the winner of the 2007 World Cup Kamsky who was promised a semi-final match for the world championship title based on the regulations prior to the World Cup. 
A transition from the current situation to a future without significant privileges must of course be organised in a way that is fair and preferably also fully acceptable to these gentlemen.
This obviously involves giving privileges to Anand in the next one or two cycles, and privileges to Kamsky in first of the ongoing cycles.
It is a bit difficult to comment categorically on the planned Kamsky-Topalov match as we don't understand the reason for organising such a match, but neither do we really know what has been discussed or agreed between FIDE and the other involved parties over the last one and a half years. The process has certainly not met our requirement for transparency.  

In summary, we want mutually binding agreements governing FIDE cycles, the eventual abolition of privileges in general, and we want FIDE to focus on fairness and predictability and not money and privileges.   
Thank You for Your attention. 
Henrik Carlsen, On behalf of IGM Magnus Carlsen, December 27^th, 2008.   "
 
Lastly we would like to mention our appreciation of the statements made by reigning World Champion V.Anand and top players V.Topalov and L.Aronian during the conference. Their comments have raised our hopes. Maybe reason will prevail in the end :-)

Happy New Year!

Henrik Carlsen,
Engerdal, January 1st, 2009

We have noted some of the comments related to Magnus' quick withdrawal from the Grand Prix.
Following an interview with the FIDE President addressing the decision process around the introduction of a new candidate tournament, we find it reasonable to provide some more background info on the withdrawal. 
In the days prior to his withdrawal we discussed at lenght the uncertainty involved regarding the FIDE decision process of changing the cycle as it was clear from the wording of the regulations that the General Assembly could not change these regulations. The final decision on changes to the regulations shall be made by the FIDE Presidential Board. 
Upon receiving the earlier reported response from Mr. Mastrokoukos on December 4th, I sent a reply (by e-mail) the same day containing many questions regarding the Grand Prix and the cycle change.
The two first questions were;  
"Has the FIDE Presidential Board already finally decided to change the Grand Prix regulations, and if so, can you please forward the new regulations?
If such new regulations are not in place yet, could you please let us know on what basis you have announced the process of staging a bid for a 2010 Candidate tournament instead of the planned match between the GP and World Cup winners?" 

Later the same day I was contacted by a senior FIDE Vice President, and I asked him some of the same questions. Below are some excerpts from the discussion we had. (The following is of course subject to my memory serving me right and also my understanding of what was said.)
His first response was that the General Assembly had decided the matter as the GA is the highest authority in FIDE. Upon my reference to the wording of the regulations he agreed that the change had not yet been administratively decided by the FIDE PB and there were no new regulations in place. The FIDE PB would anyhow follow the decision of the GA.
When asked if this meant that there were basically no regulations in effect governing the Grand Prix until the next FIDE PB meeting in March 2009, he said that if necessary this was a formality that could be handled quickly by distributing a memo on the GA-approved-change to the members of the PB for their signature. 

When discussing this with Magnus afterwards we had to conclude that either the GA decision should be considered a "done deal", or we would probably not know the outcome until late March 2009. Neither of these alternatives was acceptable to Magnus, also partly due to the need to respond to other tournament invitations.
Having already missed Nanjing due to the GP Magnus definitely wanted to avoid similar occurrences in 2009.

Henrik Carlsen,
December 17th, 2008

We have just informed FIDE by e-mail that Magnus withdraws from the Grand Prix series due to the dramatic change to these regulations approved by the General Assembly.
(According to the regulations the final decision on changes to the regulations is the responsibility of the FPB - and not the General Assembly - but we have been informed by several FIDE executives that the Presidential Board will endorse the GA decision shortly if necessary.)

Magnus is simply not motivated to continue the GP series with the dramatically changed conditions approved in Dresden, and the uncertainty related to any future changes that may be decided by FIDE. 

On November 27th we sent the following e-mail letter to the FIDE office; 

"Dear Sirs,
The purpose of this e-mail is to comment upon the recent news about FIDE changing the Regulations for the 2008 -2009 Grand Prix cycle and to request your comments to our questions pertaining to this change.
Chess as a sport, chess as an attraction to sponsors, the situation of top chess players in general and the Chess World Championship cycle, are in our opinion best and only served by a system which is transparent, fair and
predictable.
Despite a less than impressive FIDE track record over the past 15 years, the implementation of the Grand Prix 2008 - 2009 did seem to offer such a system.
To our surprise and disbelief we have been informed that the FIDE General Assembly has supported a proposed change of the Regulations of the ongoing cycle to the detriment of the Grand Prix players. The planned match of 
the winner of the Grand Prix and World Cup winners will be replaced with two spots available from each event into an 8-player world championship qualification tournament or 8-player candidate match cycle, and that this
will be decided on the next Presidential Board meeting.
We are currently considering alternative measures in response to this highly significant change, which includes legal action and the withdrawal from the cycle.

Below please find some questions which you will hopefully respond to in order to shed some light on the current and future rights of players taking part in FIDE events.
Is it your understanding, that § 1.4 in the "Regulations for the 2008 -  2009 Grand Prix", in the middle of the cycle, gives the FIDE Presidential Board the right to change the regulations in a way clearly detrimental to the
players as represented by the stipulations described in § 2 in these same regulations and also in the "Players Undertaking"?
- If the answer is no, how do you explain the planned change, and how do you justify the harm inherent to the Grand Prix winner?
- If the answer is yes, do you agree that the agreement in effect between the players and FIDE is highly biased with regard to rights, in the sense that the players have no real rights whatsoever (that cannot be set aside 
by the FIDE Presidential Board) while having to stick to the conditions agreed to in the Players Undertaking and also additional adjustments made by the FIDE Presidential Board?
And if so, do you consider this a viable policy for future agreements between FIDE and world championship cycle participants?
Lastly we would like to mention that our criticism of the latest change of regulations is not directed at the change itself. Long term this may be a viable alternative to the current match planned between the Grand Prix and World Cup winners. But changing the rules dramatically in the middle of a cycle is simply unacceptable, and this is something that should be rather obvious to anyone involved in business or high level sports competitions.

We look forward to your urgent response to these questions."   

The following response was received this morning;

"Dear Mr Carlsen,
Thank you once again for your letter.
The main point of the changes is that instead of qualifying one player from the Grand-Prix for the next stage (semi-final match against the winner of the World Cup), now two players (possibly three in case there is no player
to be qualified by rating) will qualify for an 8-player semi-final tournament. This change has been based on article 17.3 of the regulations and it is necessary as sponsors from Qatar and Montreaux have withdrew from
organising two legs of the Grand-Prix (an unforeseen situation), which puts in danger the system if it leaves the Grand Prix with less than 6 legs and no clear winner. Because of this uncertain situation, and by giving more
qualification spots, FIDE is trying to solve this problem and in the meanwhile is searching to secure, if possible, alternative sponsorship for the remaining GP legs and cycle. As the Grand-Prix has just started this
year with two events completed out of six, no player has yet a clear advantage for first place and we feel that all players are benefited as now two or three places (instead of one) are giving qualification.

Kindly also note that the agreements between the players and FIDE are of course not biased at all. The player's undertaking refers to the Regulations for the 2008-2009 FIDE Grand Prix which can be amended according to its
wording (Art. 1.4). In addition as already said, there are clearly objective and important reasons to amend these regulations in order to save the whole cycle.

We are really expecting your understanding and we are looking forward to even more exciting chess by Magnus.

Best regards,
George Mastrokoukos
FIDE - World Chess Federation "

We do find the response highly unsatisfactory. 
To mention one thing, it is hard to understand how diminishing the value of the Grand Prix series can be interpreted as a way of saving the ongoing cycle.

Having withdrawn from the Grand Prix series Magnus does not have to spend more time and energy on the uncertainty involved, and may fortunately now concentrate on playing several well organised and interesting top level events elsewhere. In the first half of 2009 he has agreed to play some Grand Slam events as well as some great rapid events, starting with a rapid tournament in Gjøvik, Norway January 2nd - 5th and the Corus A from January 16th onwards.    

Henrik Carlsen,
Lommedalen, December 4th, 2008

After Dresden I've been more concerned with the changes related to Grand Prix than with writing a summary from the Olympiad, but we would like to congratulate the Armenian team with their glorious victory in the Open group! 

As anticipated, the Norwegian team ended approximately around the pre-tournament ranking (21^st versus 19^th). Magnus was relieved to score 3.5 in the final 4 rounds to secure a decent overall result, 7.5/11 and a rating performance of 2757.
Kjetil Lie and Jon Ludvig Hammer also did very well. With a few losses at the end Kjetil was out of contention for board prizes, but the 2650+ performance and beating X.Bu of course made the Olympiad a great success for him. Jon Ludvig was really close to taking his 4^th GM norm, but as long as he consistently performs close to or above 2600 it is only a matter of time before he is not only a GM but also a strong GM. 

The Norwegian women performed slightly below expectations. The WIM title secured by Silje Bjerke and the great experience the Olympiad represents for our juniors Katrine Tjølsen and Line Jin Jørgensen were clearly  highlights for our female squad. 

What really stole the attention of Magnus and many others during the latter part of the Olympiad was of course the news from FIDE about changes to the Grand Prix cycle.

First came the short notice cancellation of Doha (about two weeks after we had been told everything was all right and could go ahead and buy plane tickets (which we did).
Going to the new venue Elista in wintertime and over Christmas was not something Magnus wanted to do, and later we have got oral confirmation that this issue has been resolved. (I don't know how and do hope it was done without any harm to other GP participants.) 

Later the really big issue came up.
Without proper prior notice, and on the last day of the FIDE congress, a proposal was approved by the (people still left in the) General Assembly to degrade the GP midway by introducing a new qualifying layer, an 8-player Candidate tournament replacing the match between GP and World Cup winners as qualification for the 2011 World Championship match.
Thursday November 27^th I wrote an e-mail letter of protest to the FIDE office on Magnus' behalf and Monday December 1^st they reverted promising a response to the letter by today (which we have not received yet).
What we want from FIDE are transparent processes, fairness and predictability.
Significantly changing the GP regulations to the detriment of the GP players in the middle of the cycle is clearly unacceptable, and the reactions we consider include legal action and withdrawal from the cycle.  

It is understandable that the FIDE board is unhappy about the fact that several top players decided against taking part in the Grand Prix. But, this should not have come as a big surprise and was anyhow known before the start of the GP cycle. Subsequently giving privileges to the players involved in the current World Championship cycle is obviously not the right way to solve their problem.   
In the (unfortunately) lopsided GP regulations, there's a clause (1.4) stating that 
"The body responsible for any changes to these Regulations is the FIDE Presidential Board."
I'm not a lawyer, but to me this passively oriented wording describing the role of the FPB would typically apply to the resolution of uncertainties or conflicts pertaining to the GP regulations and not as a basis for completely changing the purpose of the cycle midway.  

On a positive note, Magnus today visited his sponsor Smartfish (brand name of the company Pharmalogica marketing Omega-3 fish oil products) together with legendary snow boarder Terje Håkonsen.



They got an update from the Smartfish management, tasted the new juice & fish oil - drinks and played a few games of chess!
More info on Smartfish will soon be available on their currently-in-work site; www.smartfish.no. 

I'll provide an update regarding the GP in a few days. 

Henrik Carlsen
Lommedalen December 2^nd 2008

The organiser really deserves praise judging from just three aspects of the Olympiad; the vast and high quality media coverage, hotel standard (at least for the Norwegian team) and the fighting chess seen so far. 

Before dwelling on the Norwegian team performance in general and Magnus' in particular, let me congratulate GM Kjetil Lie with his birthday November 18th! 
The same Kjetil is reporting from Dresden at the home page for the Tromsø 2014 bid for hosting the chess Olympiad. An English version is provided also; http://www.tromso2014.no/2008_11_12_diary_dresden.htm  

In the Open group Norway got off to an excellent start with 6/6 points after beating Austria and Germany2 3-1 and subsequently 3^rd seed China by 2,5-1,5 without a single lost game! 

The main contributor among our heroes was the above mentioned Kjetil Lie with 3/3 but all five did well. 

In round 1 Magnus got a comfortable advantage from the opening against Markus Ragger on board 1 but 'fell asleep' in the middle game and 'woke up' in a precarious position.
Fortunately for Magnus and for Norway Ragger missed the probably winning continuation (38.h3 instead of f3). The end game looked even but Magnus managed to make it difficult for Ragger and won two pawns in a nice combination. When the latter exchanged rooks instead of going for a rook versus rook and bishop end game he was suddenly lost. 1-0. 

In round 2 Magnus played G.Meier (who has performed close to 2800 so far) and managed to more or less equalise as black. But in the pursuit of activity he ended up slightly worse in the ending and willingly repeated moves when the opportunity arose. Draw.
Kjetil won another god game as black against young promising F.Bindrich and Jon L.Hammer was in control the whole game on board 4 to secure our 3-1 victory. 

Round 3 against China clearly demonstrated the psychological battle involved in team competitions.Magnus faced the Chinese star Yue Wang who has had a remarkable breakthrough at top level this year. Wang chose a very drawish opening as white probably because the Chinese were clear rating favourites at the three other boards. Early on Magnus discovered that at least two team mates had less than favourable positions and felt he should play quite hard for a win despite the drawish position and having the black pieces. He thought for a long time before moving his knight to f5 but gradually discovered that the white counterattack in the h-file was very strong. Wang found an exquisite exchange sacrifice and with f5! Instead of Rxg4+ white would probably have been winning.
Also the game continuation looked very difficult for black, but Magnus did what he does well, he went for active play and felt in good control in the rook endgame despite being two pawns down.
By the time they entered the endgame the situation had changed dramatically on the lower boards. K.Lie had continued to present challenges for much higher rated X.Bu and the latter went wrong in time trouble. Lie, who certainly is a great tactical player, was much better and did not miss the opportunity to enter a won knight endgame with the nice g6+! sacrifice followed by 42.Nf5! 1-0 !!
L.E.Johannessen created sufficient counterplay to neutralize the slightly advantageous position against Ni Hua and drew with the black pieces. Young J.L.Hammer was slightly better with the white pieces and steered the endgame into a draw without too much problems.
Beating 3^rd seed China was probably the greatest Norwegian team chess feat ever!!     

After this remarkable victory the slightly higher rated English team did look very manageable in round 4. Magnus played M.Adams against which he has a great score with white.
He went for the unusual 7.Bf4 and after the ensuing exchanges white has a small but comfortable advantage due to the isolani on d5. Magnus played a positional game trying to create new weaknesses in the black position and allowed black to gain space and control of the c-file.
Interestingly the computers even prefer black at this stage although the players would probably agree that it is much easier to play white. Just before the time control Adams seemingly became slightly impatient and exchanged the white bishops when Magnus allowed a discovered threat against his queen. The ensuing ending was difficult for black. Adams made another few inaccuracies while Magnus found the right moves and after 46...Rd7! black simply resigned.
Simen Agdestein has historically done well against the higher rated Nigel Short and seemingly drew without too much problems. He maybe even had the better chances in the endgame.
On board 3 Johannessen spent a lot of time in the opening against young (but experienced) GM Howell. His position looked promising but deteriorated quickly when he allowed black to capture the initiative. Howell never looked back and won quite convincingly.
The other Norwegian hero of the day was J.L. Hammer. Having walked into a nasty opening preparation as black against Gawain Jones, the ending looked quite miserable. Down a pawn and with little activity the prospects was meek. But Jon Ludvig did not give in, defended stubbornly, traded of pawns and when Jones exchanged bishops as well the rook ending it is probably a draw. Jon Ludvig defended accurately to secure another very good team result, 2-2 against England.

Before round 5 Norway was number five with just Germany, Russia, Armenia and Hungary ahead of us!   

Against Azerbaijan Norway were clearly underdogs again despite the Azeri's playing without top ranked Radjabov. Maybe they are alternating when playing lower ranked teams or maybe he did not feel like playing black against Magnus taking into account his losses in Baku and Bilbao this year.

Magnus instead faced Shakriar Mamedyarov on board 1 and played 1.c4 to reach a positional set-up. Mamedyarov refused to accept the exchange offered by Magnus and gradually expanded on the kingside and in the centre. Magnus did not have a good day at work and instead of closing the position with d4 he went for the slightly dubious piece sacrifice 20.Nb5?!
Fair enough the position is filled with tactics, but not very surprisingly Mamedyarov found a good continuation and was the only one who could play for a win after winning the piece for three pawns. Later maybe he could not find anything better than trading of pieces or maybe he looked at the promising positions of his team mates. Anyhow, the game ended in a draw well before the time control.
Kjetil Lie had another promising position at board 3 but after declining to take the pawn on b4 his advantage disappeared and he was probably happy to repeat moves shortly after. 
Both Simen and Jon Ludvig had interesting positions and could well have scored half points. Jon Ludvig if he had found a better continuation before the time control and Simen after the time control despite being an exchange down.
In the end they both lost to fix a 'normal' 1-3 team result. 

The Norwegian girls are doing well. They have scored 6 points and lost only to much higher rated teams Bulgaria in round 1 and USA in round 5. All the girls has scored reasonably well and Silje Bjerke exceptionally well with 3,5/4.  

The first ranking criteria is team points instead of individual points in this Olympiad. And maybe even more importantly, the second ranking (tie-break) criteria (TB2) is a 'team-Sonnenborn-Berger' reached by multiplying the individual points scored in each match with the team points of the opponents.
(This is clearly preferable to using only individual points in which case all other teams than the medal candidates would gain from losing 2,5-1,5 purposely early in the competition in order to score many clear victories later against weaker opposition.) 

After five rounds the Norwegian open group team, together with Hungary and Netherlands, have a high TB2 among the teams at seven team points having been 'up there' all the way, faced strong opposition and lost round 5.
The Norwegian team is currently number 19, same as the pre tournament ranking!
With marvellous 3.5/4 against strong opposition Kjetil Lie is in contention for the board prize on board 3 while Magnus has also done very well with a performance above 2800 on board 1.  

Tomorrow we face Finland on board 11.
Norway is clearly higher rated but the Finns has performed well so far and are always a difficult opponent.
On board 1 Finland has young GM Tomi Nyback, already a top-100 player and very dangerous with the white pieces.
Let's keep our fingers crossed for the Norwegian teams! 

Henrik Carlsen,
Lommedalen 18.11.2008

The Norwegian team is ranked 19th out of 154 participating countries in the Open group and is probably the best possible team Norway could put together for this event.
Apart from Magnus, the team consists of GM S.Agdestein, GM K.A.Lie GM L.E.Johannessen and 18 year old school-mate-of-Magnus IM J.L.Hammer.
(Hammer does have above 2500 and 3 GM norms, but only 25 games so he needs another norm). 

The Norwegian women team is also the best we can muster and is ranked as no 39.

Magnus would consider a top-20 result in the Open group a success despite the pre tournament 19th rank as there are many strong teams with only a slightly lower average rate (for instance Netherlands, Poland, Serbia and Belarus to mention those above 2600).  
Russia is top ranked with an amazing 2756 average rating, USA is no 10 with 2673 while Germany on 11th has 2647 and is only 36 points ahead of Norway.

In the two previous Olympiads, USA has beaten Norway in the last round 3.5-0.5 to capture bronze medals and simultaneously pushed Norway far down the list. The effect of the last round result will be less significant this year with ranking based on match points (and not individual points) but maybe we can hope for a revenge match this year!

After the Bilbao tournament the Dagbladet newspaper had a long article discussing the status of chess, is it a sport or not?  
Lately the main Norwegian newspaper (judging from the combined criteria of number of readers, quality and profile) Aftenposten, has had several articles about chess and Magnus in the sport section. 
Norwegian media chess coverage has been good this autumn, probably as a result of Tromso's bid to host the 2014 chess Olympiad as well as Magnus' September visit at the top of the live rating list.
I think we can expect very good coverage also from the Olympiad in Dresden. 

I was planning to provide more info about the games Magnus played against Bu and Ivanchuk in Cap d'Agde, but frankly I haven't got enough comments from Magnus to make in worth while this time.
I'm still hoping to catch up on this later as these games were both highly exciting and probably high quality. It would be interesting to have a detailed look at for instance the Ng4+ line in Bu-Carlsen. Magnus did miss the (probably) winning line with the decisive Re8+ when suddenly white is losing despite the extra piece.

With Anand's impressive win against Kramnik in Bonn, I think everyone agrees that the chess world has been united with one undisputed champion. Most people would also agree that the path ahead looks fairly reasonable with the winner of Kamsky - Topalov playing Anand next year and the winner of the match 'World Cup 2009 winner' against 'Grand Prix 2008-2009 winner" plays the reigning champion next. 
Unfortunately the preparation for the Kamsky - Topalov match has been everything but smooth. Maybe we can hope for a somewhat humble approach from both of them from now on considering how the manager of one of them has deceived the chess world for half a year and the other got a slightly questionable wild card from FIDE.

Anyhow, Magnus and the other Grand Prix participants should continue to pursue their excellent opportunity to play high level chess tournaments in a predictable World Championship cycle. We do look forward to the next GP in Doha after Dresden! 

The Norwegian teams travelled Oslo - Praha early this afternoon and proceeded to Dresden by bus. In round 1 tomorrow Norway will probably play a team with about 2250 average rating in the Open group. 

Henrik Carlsen
Engerdal, 12.11.2008

Looking at the CCAS Rapid playing schedule back in 2006 we thought it was a bit slow and relaxed, but was surprised by how intense even the qualifier was.
With the rounds spread over many hours every day the players are in practice occupied with the tournament as much as or more than in a classical tournament.
This time it did not come as a surprise, and I also suspect that Magnus has been trying to preserve some energy until his prestigious encounter with co-leader Radjabov today. 

Yesterday in round 3 Magnus played black against Nakamura. In the opening Nakamura had the chance to repeat moves but bravely played on despite being equal or worse after the opening. In the ensuing endgame Magnus got his knight to c3 and was fairly optimistic.
Having calculated variations with Kf8 followed by Nd5 he then suddenly decided that Nd5 right away was even better, and played it quickly having missed the simple continuation Bxd5 followed by Nb5 taking control over the c-file.
White was clearly better and Magnus had to pulled himself together to try to create counterplay.
Nakamura may have missed a win with Rxg5 instead of Rxa5 after which Magnus had sufficient compensation. In the mutual time scramble Magnus repeated moves while both players had missed a fairly easy win by black with Rf5! threatening both mate and Rg5! after which white has to give up his rook for the pawn on g3.
So it ended in a draw after a good fight. 

Two years ago Magnus conceded a draw with the white pieces against Skripchenko and was eager to improve the result this year. He sacrificed a pawn in the opening and avoided the mainline to reach an interesting position several tempi up, but without a clear way to exploit the lead in development.
After a long thought he went for a queen sack getting 3 light pieces and some initiative for the queen plus two pawns. Later he must have gone wrong somewhere as Rybka finds the black position clearly advantageous due to the threat f4 and Bh3!
In the actual game continuation black slowly was outplayed and resigned without much time left, two more pieces down facing imminent mate.

The rating favourites took the lead after 4 rounds in group B with Magnus and Radjabov at 3.5/4 and Nakamura and Karpov at 2.5.
In group B young Fabiano Caruana continued his winning streak to take a sole lead with 4.5/5. 



Today Magnus played black against Karpov in the early round (11AM). Watching the two sit down for the game reminded me of their first encounter in the Reykjavik rapid tournament blitz qualifier back in March 2004. Mentally that tournament represented an important break through for Magnus. His time scramble blitz win against Karpov and subsequent rapid draw against Kasparov demonstrated that they were not invincible despite their iconoc status.
It cannot have been pleasant for Karpov to lose to the 13 year old boy (who looked even younger) but his behaviour afterwards certainly was commendable. He was most accommodating with a Norwegian film crew giving a long interview praising Magnus. He has also talked favourably about Magnus on several subsequent occasions.

This morning, Magnus played the Nimzo-Indian and they continued along a drawish line. Magnus blitzed out the whole game while Karpov spent some 20 minutes maybe trying to look for alternatives to the game continuation. Magnus was happy to return to his room early to relax and prepare for Radjabov at 4 PM. 

In round 6 Radjabov played the Philidor against Magnus' 1.e4 and equalised according to the computers. Still it is probably easier to play white due to the bishop pair and better pawn structure. Radjabov posed enough tactical problems to Magnus in the middle game but after 26...d5 27.exd5 cxd5 white is clearly better.
Magnus missed the continuation 36.Nxd5 Nxd5 37.f4! but also his choice 36.Nb5 gives white an edge. He activated his king and despite missing a tactic shot (and losing his knight) his queen side pawns decided the game. 1-0.      

After dinner (and desert) in an Italian restaurant in Cap Magnus faced 17 year old GM S.Feller from France in the last round of the qualifier (at 9PM). In a complex position Magnus played the flashy 15.... Nf4. He did not really consider it good for black but it was both complex and very tempting.
Feller found a good continuation and got active play and two light pieces for a rook and two pawns.
He was still better when he short on time went for repetition checks. Draw. 

Nakamura beat Karpov with black to tie Magnus at 5.5/7 but Magnus has the better Sonnenborg-Berger.

Hou Yifan beat Skripschenko to tie for 4^th but lost the second round of blitz playoff to Karpov. 

In the B-group leaders Ivanchuk and Caruana drew the last round and the latter won the group with 5.5 points, ahead of Ivanchuk (5), Vachier-Lagrave and Bu (4.5).
Early leader Cheparinov ended at 4/7 but it was not enough to qualify. 

Overall the female participants obtained many promising positions also against the top ranked players, but was quite consistently outplayed in time trouble. Hou Yifan was of course closest to qualify but also Kosteniuk and Koneru would well have qualified with the margins on their side. 

Magnus is fairly happy about his performance in the qualifier. As in the ECC he has made some blunders but generally been in control and avoided time trouble.

We have the following Quarter finals: 
Caruana - Karpov (at 2:30 PM) and Ivanchuk - Radjabov (at 6 PM) tomorrow.
Vachier-Lagrave - Nakamura (at 2:30 PM) and Bu - Carlsen (at 6 PM) on Thursday. 

Each match consists of two rapid games and if 1-1, two plus two blitz games and if necessary sudden death. 

Tomorrow is consequently a rest day for Magnus and maybe we can play some more football if the weather allows :-) 

Henrik Carlsen,
Cap d'Agde, October 28th 2008 

The CCAS (Caisse Centrale a'Activites Sociales du Personnel des Industries Electrique et Gaziere) Rapid takes place in the Cap d'Agde vacation centre of the Union of the Electicity and Gas workers (at the seaside Cap of the inland town Agde).
In addition to the Rapid events there are several Opens with about 700 participants in total.  

Yesterday Magnus drew no 1 and consequently played 2 white games today. In round 1 he played Hou Yifan, China and in round 2 Humpy Koneru, India.

Group A had battled it out first (at 2 PM) with 4 decisive games, and two hours later B-group was introduced and got started as well. (The time control is 25min + 10s increment from move 1.)

The "theatre" in which they play is very intimate. Not because it is small, it does room several hundred spectators. Still the atmosphere is very special, the playing area is compact and with heavy spotlights and spectators circling most of the floor the players probably feel like boxers in a ring.

 

An obvious highlight of round 1 was Nakamura - Radjabov.
Radjabov played his usual King Indian and after a fierce fight he broke through on the kingside and won.

Magnus was quite satisfied with his game against Hou. The opening was not very ambitious but when black spent a tempo with Qe7, Magnus could play d4 and they entered a quite usual line with white a tempo up. Magnus had several defensive resources, but chose the interesting exchange sack with Bf3 after Ng3 with a pawn and lots of positional compensation for the exchange. Black was pushed back and it was hard to create counterplay. When she did try Magnus decided to go for an ending a pawn up and better pieces. When Hou lost another pawn she resigned.

In group A most of the rating favourites won round 1 with the exception of Bu who lost as black against young Caruana. In round 2 three games ended draw. Ivanchuk, Lagrave, Cheparinov and Caruana all have 1,5 points.

In round 2 in group B the rating favourites Magnus, Radjabov and Nakamura won while Karpov conceded a draw to young Hou Yifan. 
Magnus did not get much from the opening. After having built up a little pressure on the kingside he played 20.Re3 having missed the response Nb3! However, Humpy defended a bit passively and Magnus could enter the rook and knight ending with a clear initiative. He won one pawn and after a lot of manouevring another one. 1-0 and Magnus share the lead with Radjabov with 2/2 in group B. An excellent start.

Tomorrow the A-group will play 3 more rounds (at 11AM, 4PM and 9PM) while the B-group plays 2 rounds at 2PM and 6 PM. On Tuesday its the other way round, and if needed tie-breaks will be played from 10:30 PM onwards  Tuesday night.

Another beautiful summer day in Cap today, and it is supposed to last for another day or two :-)

Henrik Carlsen,
Cap d'Agde October 26th 2008