Magnus Carlsen

Magnus travelled directly from the Biel closing ceremony on Friday in direction of Tromsoe, but didn't reach the connecting flight in Oslo (at 23:15) due to a close interval between flights and the missing luggage of his co-traveller. By always helpful SAS they were told they had no rights due to the cheap tickets and should not have waited 10 minutes for the luggage (because it had been sent to Lublyana anyway). There were only 4 seats available to Tromsoe the next day, and they were told to ask for help at the SAS service counter the next morning at 05:30.
To me this sounded like a dubious preparation for round 1 in the Arctic Chess Challenge in Tromsoe, so we booked seats with Norwegian at 11 the next day and the boys stayed overnight at an hotel at Gardemoen airport.

Well, this continued the string of exciting event from the final days of the Biel tournament. 

After his clear lead with 4.5/6, Magnus faced bottom-seeded Pelletier in round 7. Not getting any advantage out of the opening, Magnus found Bxh7 to be a clean and exciting way of drawing the game.
But, when he later (having missed the resource Ra7) blundered with Ne4 he was clearly worse. Pelletier played precisely to win the ending. Radjabov also won his game to come a-level with Magnus. 

In round 8 as black against Van Wely Magnus did not believe in whites attack as he had missed Qh6! After this he had a difficult ending but may have had good chances until he played Ke7? instead of Kd6! (He had simply missed Re3.) 
After two losses in a row he obviously lost some of his usual confidence. He was at the same time uneasy about his last game against Radjabov but also marvelled at the thought that he could in theory still win the tournament.
After 1.e4 it followed d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 e5 but Magnus was in a must-win situation and continued 4.Nge2 instead of trading queens.
After 11 moves they were out of theory and for spectators (and Rybka) it looked as black was OK or maybe even better. However, Magnus was very satisfied with his moves Rxa3, Re3 and Re1 after which Radjabov spent about 40 minutes before choosing the somewhat desperate Qc7. Magnus felt the rest went relatively easy as his pieces was excellently coordinated for a king side attack. 
Meanwhile Onichuk drew Motylev and later Polgar-Pelletier also drew so that Magnus played a tie-break against Onischuk. Maybe due to both players being tired the rapid and blitz games contained many mistakes from both sides but surprisingly ended in draws all of them. In the end Magnus won the Armageddon game (as black) to clinch the title!
Pelletier came third on quality ahead of Polgar, Grischuk and Radjabov, all just half a point behind Magnus and Onischuk.

Although the priority for Magnus should still be to learn, practice and have fun, he was understandably both excited and well satisfied with his first high level tournament victory! As he told the organiser in the "interview with the winner", he likes Biel and the playing venue, and Olivier Breitsacher was very helpful and understanding in every way. Thank You! 

Henrik Carlsen
Tromsoe, August 5th