Magnus Carlsen

A heavy schedule awaited the Tal participants also playing the World Championship Blitz and the World Cup in Khanty Mansyisk.
Including the ETC at Crete Ivanchuk, Mamedyarov, Shirov and Magnus have already been playing continually for nearly a month even before the WC.
Typically Ivanchuk does never seem to tire and he also did excellently in the Blitz.
The other three all had some problems at various stages of the tournament.
 
Jakovenko and Alekseev skipped the Blitz due to the World Cup and Peter Svidler was ill.
They were replaced by A. Morozevich and qualifiers nr 7 and 8 Rublevskij and Korotylev.
Except for Topalov, Anonian and Radjabov the whole World Elite played in the 38 round Blitz marathon taking place in the ballroom of the GUM shopping centre at the Red Square with a nice view to Kremlin and the Lenin Mausoleum.  

Magnus had to get up nearly 4 hours earlier than he was used to during his stay in Moscow and was pretty tired from the start. He got black against Anand in round 1, managed to get a promising position but when he started making mistakes Anand punished him in his impressively clean and efficient way to secure a won ending.
In game 2 Magnus was an exchange up against Kasimzhanov when he blundered back the exchange. Draw. After winning game 3 against Savchenco Magnus lost 3 in a row against Kamsky, Kramnik and Rublevskij and was quite disgusted with his own play.
After a exceptional coca-cola he got more energetic and got back to 50% beating Ponomariov, Karpov and Korotylev.
The rest of the day he had many nice positions but lost quite a few of them to end the day at 50%. 

Grichuk and Ivanchuk was leading the field most of the day, while a surprisingly modest Anand was at 50% after 15 rounds. He duly won the last 4 and the first 6 or 7 the next day to join the race for the trophy. 
Magnus started day 2 by a simple blunder in a slightly better position against Anand and lost in the end. The next few rounds he did well, winning 3 and drawing Kramnik. The rest of the day resembled the first day with too many missed opportunities.
For instance his knight + 3 connected pawn against Ivanchuk's rook should have been winning.
He showed a good fighting spirit in round 36 against Leko declining a repetition of moves with 24 seconds against 2 minutes in a fairly equal position as black! It was a draw in the end though. 

Ivanchuk and Anand was leading the event most of day 2 and they met in the final round. Can it get any better! Anand was 2 pawns up when he dramatically blundered a full rook and resigned. Congratulations to the winner Ivanchuk, runner up Anand, and Grischuk and Kamsky at shared 3^rd! 
Magnus was not satisfied with his 9^th place nor by his many poor missed opportunities on day 1. One reason may be that he has not played as much internet blitz this year as he did in the past years.
On a positive note, he got a number of promising positions even against the highest rated players, he won a total of 15 games and improved his score from last year (+1) to +3 this year.
He also was only 1 point shy of 5^th place so the margins were small this time. 

Yours truly had joined the organisers chauffeur in picking up GM Kjetil Lie at the airport during day 2. He is joining us as Magnus' second in Khanty-Mansiysk.  The marathon blitz was followed by closing ceremony (in Russian) with a buffet at the Golden Ring hotel leaving time for only a few hours sleep before the early morning departure to Khanty-Mansiysk. 

UT air was a pleasant surprise this time. They accepted Visa at the ticket desk and the flight went smooth, on time, the service was excellent service, and the meal very good! 

Most of Friday night was spent for accreditation, the Players meeting, Opening ceremony and the Governor?s reception, and Magnus was very tired when preparing for black in the first game against IM Zhao from Australia.
He got a long night sleep but still felt a bit exhausted during the long tense game today.
Missing several of white's continuation he managed to pull him self together to put up sufficient resistance to avoid a loss. In the slightly better endgame he tried a last trick Bd4+. Young Zhao thought both Ke2 and Nxd4 would draw and he chose Nxd4 having missed Kh7 with a very promising rook endgame for black.
Zhao defended quite well but in the end the black g-pawn decided the game. 0-1 and the best possible start for Magnus.
All credits to the most likeable young Australian, who is clearly underrated and more than ready to play for his GM-norms in Europe this winter. 

Henrik Carlsen
Khanty-Mansiysk, November 24th