Magnus Carlsen

The final rounds of the Arctic Chess Challenge 2007 in Tromsoe are (very) old news by now.
The purpose of this update is simply to provide some of Magnus own reflections on the games and the tournament development in general. 

In round 7 as black against GM Burmakin Magnus was in a "must-win" situation to stay in contact with the leaders.

He was happy about the opening and after Bd6 the position required Rxf5. After Re1 white is clearly worse.
Nb5 may look nice but did not achieve anything, and pushing the kingside pawns with h3, g4 and f4 was too desperate. (It is interesting to see how even Fritz proposes these moves initially only to find out later that it is loosing to Nf4.)
Magnus saw that Nf4 was a good alternative, but he thought Re3 was even better as he had missed a white mating threat in one variation.
When Burmakin found Nxe4 cxd4 Bxd4 Rg3 Bf2 Rxh3 Bxh3 Qxh3 Magnus thought he would find the drawing combination with 32. Be1, but was of course happy with Bxb6 providing new winning chances. Due to beginning time trouble white probably made many mistakes in the endgame and lost quickly.
GM Kjetil Lie won against Mikhalevski in a terrible time scramble to maintain the sole lead with 6.5/7. 

In round 8 Magnus got the chance to pick up with Lie, facing him as black on the top board. Lie's opening was maybe a bit dubious and after 0-0-0 black is clearly better. However, Magnus went on to make some inaccurate moves starting with c5 and despite the extra pawn the ending was clearly drawn.

Moiseenko and Gashimov drew on table 2 so that Lie was alone in the lead with 7/8 followed by Moisenko and Gurevich at 6.5 and Magnus, Epishin, Brodsky and Majeica at 6.

Magnus was clearly unhappy about another lost possibility in this tournament, but fortunately he was back in a fighting mood the next morning. 



Round 9 started at 10 o'clock and Magnus arrived about 15 minutes late. Maybe a bit annoying for his opponent GM Epishin but no harm was meant by Magnus.
He played a good positional game as white and when they got closer to the time control Epishin became too active when he should have stayed put.
Rxf4 was probably the decisive mistake, and a pawn down and with white rooks penetrating the 6^th rank Epishin later also played Rxc4 loosing a rook after Rb8+.
GM Lie overestimated his chances as white against Gashimov and after declining a ending that was probably drawn, he soon went on to lose instead. A pity for Lie, but anyhow a tremendous tournament performance gaining him well above 20 Elo points.
On table 2 Gurevich as black had the upper hand against Moiseenko only to lose in the time scramble.
After this exciting finish Moiseenko won the tournament alone on 7.5/9 followed by Lie, Gashimov and Magnus on 7 points.
Congratulations also to J.Thomassen (who will join and strengthen the chess group at the Top Athletes School this autumn)  and Berg Hanssen for scoring their first IM norms!  



Shared 2^nd to 4^th with 7/9 was a good result for Magnus especially taking into account his lacklustre start.
His overall score was as expected and not surprisingly this is not enough to win a strong open as one or more of the other GM's statistically will score considerably higher than expected, as Lie and Moiseenko did this time.   

Many thanks to the organiser for a great tournament. It is hard to imagine a better place to combine vacation and chess!

 
No, there are no live polar bears in Tromsoe...  Sister Signe at the other end of the camera this time.

Henrik Carlsen
Lommedalen, August 13th