Magnus Carlsen

Magnus was eager to strike back after his loss in round 6.
As white against Gelfand he decided to avoid the most usual lines and played 1.c4. He was a bit surprised when Gelfand allowed 7.d4 which is supposed to be good for white. Magnus is not so sure about this anymore.
He decided on the plan 11.f3 exf3 12.exf3 missing the counterplay black gets with Ra8-b8-b4 and Magnus was clearly worse.
Managing to pull himself together he chose a typical way out for him by givng up the b-pawn tfor counterplay on the queenside. Gelfand gave back the c-pawn and exchanged queens to enter a slightly better ending. Magnus chose to take the black d and f-pawns before returning with his rook to a2 to stop the black a-pawn.
During the march of the black king Magnus pushed his g- and h-pawns so that he would get sufficient counterplay with the d- and/or g-pawns to secure a draw after sacking his bishop on a3.
Gelfand took the d4 pawn instead and offered a draw which Magnus accepted.
Another good defence by Magnus but he is not happy to have squandered another white game by committing a serious oversight early in the game.

Kramnik secured his lead with a draw against Jakovenko where he shook off the white attach against his pet Petroff. Kramnik was a pawn up in the ending but maybe it is difficult to find a way to try to exploit the material advantage.
Shirov looked solid as black against Alekseev and when white tried a manoeuvre on the king side leaving a pawn unprotected on h5, Shirov duly countered and won the endgame in style. What a comeback! 5 decisive games, 2 wins in a row and unshared 2^nd for Shirov.

Mamedyarov got problems after the opening as white against Kamsky who showed his deep understanding of certain positions to take home the full point with an attack against the exposed white king.
Ivanchuk did not manage to get an edge as white against Leko and the game was drawn relatively early. 

Round 8 saw many exiting games but only one with decisive result.
As black against Kramnik, Mamedyarov chose the modern defence and the position was highly tactical in the middle game. Despite his exposed king Shakryar managed to hold on to an extra pawn for a while. He probably tried to win although his bishop was less dangerous than the white knight and after exchanging rooks black allowed a white queen plus knight attack resulting in deadly mating threats. 1-0 and Kramnik has won 4 white games!!
Only Magnus has survived as black, no wonder Kramnik was impressed with Magnus opening preparation in round 1.
 Shirov played white against Gelfand and had the initiative. But then he seemed, from his clear expressed sigh's, to have missed an elegant defence by Gelfand, and entered a worse ending with black having the bishop pair. However, some 10+ moves later white had reached a drawn ending. Draw.

Magnus was black against Leko, from my perspective one of the toughest challenges in this tournament for Magnus. It's both because Magnus lost as black in Linares and because there are obvious similarities between the two. At 14 Leko was the youngest grandmaster ever and at 16 he was a gifted attacking player that got invited to most of the top level tournaments. He's been there, experienced it and moved on. 11 more years at top level has obviously give him a considerable edge when facing young Magnus.
Leko chose the open Spanish with Bxc6 but was maybe a bit surprised when Magnus chose the Qf6 continuation.After exchanging queens white has a tempo or two that he used to double his rooks in the d-line, but Magnus blitzed out the next three moves as well to play b6, 0-0-0 and c5 to establish the right defence. After Magnus found 16....f5! the position looked very drawish, but Leko played on to try to fence of the queenside to be in a position to exploit his kingside pawn majority. Magnus had exactly the tempo necessary to force a repetition of moves with Kc4 Ne5+ Kd5 Nd3 etc.
White cannot let Magnus play b4 to penetrate the queenside defence. Draw.
Maybe not a very exciting game, but as black in the exchange variation of Spanish his job is mainly to defend. 

Congratulations to Kramnik for (already) winning the tournament and for his impressive play. 

Before the last round as white against Kamsky, Magnus is sharing 3^rd to 6^th. Depending on the result tomorrow his tournament performance will be acceptable, good or excellent! (He has 4/8 and the expected score is 4,15 out of 9.) 

On a positive note, many thanks to cereal trafficker (and New in Chess Chief Editor) Dirk Jan van Geuzendam Magnus has received renewed supplies of Weetabix (wholegrain wheat). (Not surprisingly his loss in round 6 coincided with having run out of Weetabix...)

The internet access is working fine in the hotel and after the game today Magnus was eager to get an update on his schoolmates playing a tournament in Trondheim, and on his sisters Ellen and Ingrid  in Round1 of the World Youth Championship (U-18 and U-14 respectively) in Antalya, Turkey. 
 
For those who might think so, the action is not over by tomorrow in the Tal Memorial festival.
Tomorrow and the day after the super strong blitz qualification for the Blitz World Championship 2007 takes place. All the ten main tournament participants, invitees Anand and Karpov and rumours says also Svidler and Grischuk, will join the qualifiers in the 34 round final November 21-22 on the catwalk of the famous GUM shopping mall.
 
Henrik Carlsen
Moscow, November 18th