Magnus Carlsen

In a way there's some justice to the fact that it is cold up north. Distances are short. Oslo-Moscow looks far on the map but is less than a 2,5 hours flight.
Travelling to Moscow in the morning left time for a few hours at the (Arbat) hotel prior to the opening ceremony, drawing of lots and ceremonial dinner.
Magnus and as many as five of the other Tal participants played the European National Team Championship in Crete and some of them travelled directly to Moscow afterwards. Magnus fortunately could spend two nights at home trying to recover from his cold. 

In Crete the Norwegian team did well, but in the final 3rd the 3-1 loss against Israel and 2-2 against Montenegro and against Serbia left them at 7 team points and 22^nd place. Well ahead of initial ranking (27^th) but not really what they had hoped for.
Magnus was generally happy about his performance although the last round loss with white spoiled what looked like a tremendous tournament performance. 6,5/9, a TPR of 2757, and gaining 6 rating points are still very good!
He was especially pleased with 3 out of 4 with black against Shirov, Sutovsky, Stefansson and Kuolats.
His team mates Espen Lie and Jon Ludvig Hammer did well with around 2500 performances and the last round win gave 2^nd board Kjetil Lie an acceptable 4/9.
Probably many internet spectators shared my feeling of surprise when Magnus seemingly rejected the possibility to claim a 3-fold repetition in the worse ending against Sutovsky. (In the opening, when playing Ng4-f6, Magnus had missed the white resource Qa5 and was happy and a little lucky to be alive at all.)
However, Magnus did try to claim a repetition. He stopped the clock, called the arbiter and wrote down the 3^rd repetition. Sutovsky protested and correctly pointed out that Magnus had got things in a slightly wrong order. He should have written down the move before stopping the clock and calling the arbiter. I wonder it he could simply have stopped the clock once more and called the arbiter again without making his move?
(In the end another repetition occurred and Magnus followed the correct procedure this time.)
What makes Sutovsky's behaviour questionable, was that he himself earlier in the game had acted unacceptably in several ways. He had for instance violated the rules by writing down several forced moves ahead. Magnus reacted to this by visibly shrugging his shoulders but did not protest to the arbiter.
The whole incident was very surprising by seemingly gently Sutovsky. (Maybe it boils down to a difference in culture. For Norwegians the intention of your actions is the important thing. As long as you're not intending to do wrong you are considered innocent, while if you purposely try to cheat your opponent you are morally guilty despite not being caught or punished.) 

In Tal Memorial Magnus is facing 5 of the top10 players and all 10 participants all ranked 19 or higher in the world. The field Ivantchuk (ranked 2), Kramnik (3), Leko (5), Mamedyarov (7), Shirov (10), Gelfand (11), Alekseev (14), Carlsen (16), Kamsky (17) and Jakovenko (19) is category 20 and Magnus faces an average opposition of 2744!
The opening ceremony and drawing of lots last night took place in the elegant Golden Ring Hotel at Smolenskaja avenue. Each participant chose an umbrella, opened it and revealed the starting number underneath. The first 6 drew 4 black and 2 white, followed by Alekseev drawing white.
Magnus was quite optimistic being left with 2 out of 3 "white" umbrellas but managed to find the only black left :-(
Black against Kramnik in round 1, well, it could have been easier. Let's hope that more than 12 hours sleep was what it takes to do his best. 

Last year Magnus made his top level debut in Tal Memorial 2006 with 3,5/9. In the meantime he has had a somewhat dismal performance in Corus, done excellently in Morelia-Linares, made a very good Monaco debut, won Gausdal GM A, fought courageously and well beyond expectations against Aronian in the Candidates match, had an acceptable Dortmund debut, won the category 18 Biel tournament and shared 2^nd in the Arctic Challenge.
Year 2007 has already offered more than any 16 year old chessplayer could reasonably hope for or even dream of. 

Henrik Carlsen
Moscow, November 10th