Magnus Carlsen

There have been many people claiming that a KO tournament is too much of a lottery. Of course 2 games is insufficient to really determine the relative strength of about equally strong players.
But statistics says it works quite well early in the tournament. An impressive 15 of the top 16 seeds are still in contention.
(For comparison, probably less than 15 out the 16 top seeds would end up among the top 32 in a 128 player swiss.)
That said we must of course expect several more rating upsets in the top in the next rounds. In game 1 of round 3 we saw 5 white victories (Cheparinov, Adams, Kamsky, Jakovenko and Wang) and 11 draws. 

Magnus celebrated his 17^th birthday as black against Dominguez Perez.
(Many thanks for all the greetings on the blog and elsewhere!)
He was satisfied with his position after the opening feeling he had equalised. Being quite comfortable when he played 17.Nd5 and 19.Nf4?, after the replay Qg4 he suddenly saw all white tactic threats. He had to defend very accurately to survive and felt that he managed to do so.

Dominguez Perez had the initiative controlling the c-file and threatening f7 but in the beginning time trouble he could not find any better alternative than exchanging rooks and the bishop to enter a queen ending a pawn up.

There does not seem to be any way white can defend his pawns and avoid perpetual while at the same time making progress, and a draw was agreed after 45 moves. 

Lets us hope that tomorrows game will be an interesting one. 

Henrik Carlsen
Lommedalen, November 30th