Magnus Carlsen

Yesterday most of the players and accompanying persons took advantage of the beautiful weather and courtesy of the organiser and participated in the interesting excursion along the river Nervion. After a short trip south under the Calatrava bridge and to watch the Guggenheimer museum, we headed towards the sea.



Bilbao was one of the biggest shipping points for iron ore and had many shipyards but today the city has been modernized, the river cleaned and the main industry is tourism.
The Bilbao area has more than 1 million inhabitants but the city itself has less than 400 thousand after Franco in the 30's divided the area into several smaller cities supposedly to promote the status of Madrid relative to Bilbao.
Near the sea we visited the charming port of Portugalete and walked across the 63 meter high and more than 100 meter long iron bridge built in 1893. (The unique iron construction paved the way for the building of the more famous Eiffel tower in Paris.) 
Magnus chose to sleep long and prepare for round 1 at the hotel instead. 

The opening ceremony was headed by eminent chess journalist and radio reporter Leontxo Garcia in the stairs of the impressive atrium reception hall of Sheraton. It was followed by a great number of journalists and spectators. (This is Spain!) 



Technically the blindfold games are conducted slightly differently from Monaco. The players type the from-to fields on a keyboard. They have an empty chess board but no computer screen in front to avoid any misperceptions by the audience about what the players actually can see during the game.
The time limits are 25 minutes + 10 seconds per move. This increment is pretty tight as the players have to type the fields, check it on a screen on the wall in front of them, and press the clock.
They play Sofia rules (no draws except by repetition of moves or dead endgames) and the winner of each game gets 3 points while a draw is rewarded with 1 point each. 

Magnus faced Pentala Harikrisna, India with the black pieces in the first game. Prior to the game the players was physically blindfolded to highlight the essence of blindfold chess.

 
He felt he played well in the opening, and at a certain point he thought he could take on b3 with the knight to trade a knight and bishop for a rook and 3 pawns but in time he discovered that white after Bxc4 has Qa2. Black would not win the a-pawn and would probably be worse. Magnus instead had to retreat his queen but when Pentala sacked the a-pawn without proper compensation white was both a pawn down and in time trouble.
Magnus played for a win with Ne4 but had missed Qa8. At one point Magnus typed Kh5h6 instead of h5h6 and the computer failed to understand this move. However, the move was shown on the screen ahead of Pentala and they continued to play many moves before the arbiter made them stop.
After a pause and repeating the latest moves, they continued the game. In time trouble Pentala missed a winning combination with g4 and Bf5 after which they traded the remaining pieces into a deadlocked pawn ending. Draw.(The organiser is planning to change the software slightly so that the players immediately get feedback on illegal moves.) 

In the second game as white Magnus did not get any advantage from the opening but felt that he was continually improving his position. He was very pleased with g4 to prevent any activities of blacks white squared bishop.
In serious time trouble black misunderstood the knight move d3c5. Pentala thought Magnus had played c4c5. He took the b3 pawn with his queen and resigned when Magnus captured back with Knight c5b3. 

After a nice victory with white against J.Polgar, top seed V.Topalov blundered a piece in the opening as black. He had mentally read Judiths bishop move from b3 to d5 as a knight move from e3 to d5. After Bg4 both the bishop and the knight on c6 is hanging! 1-0 and 3 points each. 

X.Bu managed to decide a an ending with a pawn up and rook and opposite coloured bishops as white against Karjakin and shares the lead with Magnus after drawing as black. 

Today Magnus faces the co-leader Bu at 18:30.  
(In the spectator and commentary room in Sheraton the transmission worked perfectly but is seems that was not the case for internet spectators. Hopefully this will improve today.) 

Henrik Carlsen
Bilbao, October 17th