Magnus Carlsen

Feeling much better Friday Magnus played white against Gelfand in round 5.
He was reasonably happy about Gelfands choice of Slav variation with 4...Bg4. After h3 Bxf3 Qxf3 white has the bishop pair and if he can stabilize the position he will have a clear advantage.
However, Gelfand played very accurate exploiting the potential threat along the b8-h2 diagonal. Magnus had to withdraw his white bishop to e2 and after black gets his knight to b3 Magnus could only find (the somewhat desperate) Nb5 to avoid being worse. After the exchanges black is a pawn up, but white can easily force a drawn endgame after Be7 destroying the black pawn structure to enter a opposite-coloured ending. Gelfand offered a draw and Magnus accepted.
All games were drawn although we saw several hard fought battles. Mamedyarov put pressure on Anand in a queen Indian with b5 but got off to a narrow escape in the end. Leko put a lot of pressure on Kramnik in the Russian variation but the latter held the draw after precise defence.



 In round 6 Magnus was black against Mamedyarov and they played a Queen Indian.
Mamedyarov played Qa4+, Bg5 and took the bishop on f6. Magnus has the bishop pair but has to defend his queen side accurately. White tried to exploit the open c-file but had missed blacks immediate 18?.c5 after which black has no problems.
After massive exchanges on d4 black has the better pawn structure with the "bad" bishop on e6 protecting the "good" pawn on d5, but Magnus did not see any realistic winning chances and accepted Mamedyarovs draw offer after 26 moves.
Kramnik went on to secure his third win as white to claim a whole point lead before the last round. Anand seemed to have a promising attack against Alekseev but could not find a decisive continuation. Draw.
Leko played energetically as black and managed to win an opposite colored end game against Gelfand to win the first black game in Dortmund this year and to share 2^nd with Anand and Alekseev. 

On the July rating list Magnus got 2710 and climbed to 17^th place on the overall list. 27 sounds good, Magnus sure was happy to reach this milestone!
Congratulations to Anand for keeping his 1^st place. 

Today Magnus plays white against Anand and would of course love to secure his first win in this tournament.
But following the 0-2 score in Linares-Morelia this may be a tough challenge both at the board and psychologically.
Kramnik is black against Alekseev and only needs a draw to secure clear 1^st. 

Henrik Carlsen
Dortumund, July 1st