Magnus Carlsen

All games were drawn on the last day of Tal Memorial, but only one lasted less than 20 moves though.

Magnus was eager to try to win as white against Kamsky. He played 1.e4 and after the response e5 Magnus went for the closed Roy Lopez and 8.a4.
Based on time spent on first 10 moves Kamsky did not seem to have a preparation in hand but as usual with black his experience and understanding makes him able to play the right moves.
Magnus felt his plan with h3, g4 and Nf3-h4-xg6 was promising. Kamsky again found good responses. Magnus turned down a draw offer after 25....Bxc5 and tried to exploit having the black king locked up at h8. He thought he had real winning chances, however, after playing 34.Bf7, Kamsky found the immediate save e4! after which white cannot make progress in the opposite coloured bishop endgame. Game drawn after 37 moves.
Fortunately a good try by Magnus and a fairly interesting game for the audience. 

Mamedyarov is normally a fantastic fighter, (we loved his repeated comments in Wijk a few years back after winning several drawn-looking endgames; "He said draw, I said play") but after his losses in round 7 and 8 he seemed disinterested in the last round as white against Alekseev. Shakryar came about 15 minutes late and traded off queens and 2 pieces and offered a draw in 15 moves. A bit of a surprise as both players had a considerable economic incentive to try to win while a loss wouldn't really hurt them the same way. 
Ivanchuk presented Kramnik with some challenges in to his Petroff but was probably never anywhere near a decisive advantage and not surprisingly the opposite bishop ending came down to a split of points. 
Jakovenko was well prepared as white against Shirov but despite initiative he obviously could not find a way to exploit it and a draw was agreed well before the time control. This secured Shirov an unshared 2^nd at +1! Gelfand used a lot of time in the opening against a well prepared Leko but could not get a advantage and the game was drawn just after Magnus and Kamsky had finished. 

4.5/9 and the fact that he did not lose to Kramnik gave Magnus a 4^th place on tie-break (shared 3^rd-6^th) after Kramnik (+4), Shirov(+1) and Gelfand(0).   
Magnus was interviewed by several Russian TV stations after the round and said he was reasonably happy about his overall result. He strongly disliked losing to Shirov from a clearly better position, but on the other hand saved some difficult positions. 

Several Russian experts I spoke to commented that Magnus had made significant progress over the last year. Going from -2 last year to 50% this year is no coincidence.
Not surprisingly they still think he plays a bit too much (and they are probably right), but as one pointed out Magnus learns a lot from his tournament activity based on the strong ability to transform new information related to the preparation, playing and analysis of his games into real knowledge.

If the Classic part has been the main course, the World Championship Blitz will be the dessert for Magnus:-)
It'll be a real marathon, according to the latest information 20 players will play 38 rounds November 21^st and 22nd. There's 6 qualifiers despite the late inclusion of Grischuk and Svidler.

Amazingly the qualifier has 39 participants above 2600 and 4 above 2700 (Adams, Ponomariov, Akopian and Wang Yue).
After 8 rounds and with 14 to go, Kasimzhanov is in the lead.
 
Henrik Carlsen
Moscow, November 19th