Magnus Carlsen

The games may still suffer a bit from the participant's overseas travel, but it sure was another exciting round for the spectators. 

Magnus played a well-known Nimzo-Indian line against Leko.
It was supposed to he fairly good for white, and Magnus did hence expect an improvement from Leko.
The development was unfortunately somewhat reminiscent of round 3 in that Magnus sat looking at the position after 15.Bg3 and suddenly saw that black can play 16... Bxd5 instead of the normal Nxd5.
And this was indeed Leko's novelty after which black has equalised.

Magnus spent about 35 minutes on the clock and decided on playing the speculative 17.Be2?!
Leko thought Bxg2 was unclear and decided against it. But also after Rc8 the computers clearly prefer black.
After 18.e4 Leko chose Bc6 instead of Be6 preferred by the ICC commentators as well as the computer. Later this evening Leko mentioned that Be6 Rd1 Nc5 followed by the surprising Qb7!, which none of the players had seen during the game, would have been good for black.  

Following a few more slightly passive moves from Leko, Magnus found a nice combination with 27.Nb5! after which white is better.
Magnus spent the remaining time trying to find a winning continuation but without success.
In the end he had to blitz out moves till the time control after which a draw has agreed in the equal ending.

Despite many good middle game moves Magnus was not happy with his play today, and he hopes that the after effects of the long tennis session in the sun yesterday will turn to the positive tomorrow. 

Ivanchuk-Aronian featured the line Magnus played against Leko in Dortmund last year and after an improvement from Ivanchuk he was clearly better.
After a few more minor mistakes by Aronian white had a winning position.
Despite two extra pawns Ivanchuk spent too much time and entered a terrible, and seemingly unnecessary, time trouble where he blundered a full piece and later lost. 0-1. 

Topalov played the Sicilian Sveshnikov as black against Shirov and decided to exchange queens and most of the pieces to enter a slightly worse ending.
After some ingenious manoeuvres Shirov put pressure on the black pawns on h6, f7 and d6 and after a nice king walk he secured a winning advantage and the whole point. 

Radjabov sacked a pawn in the opening as black against Anand and got active play. Anand seemingly had control and the better position but after one or two inaccurate moves the advantage had disappeared and a draw was agreed.

The draw percentage is still below 50%! 
After 4 rounds all players (!) have lost minimum one game and Topalov, Anand and Aronian is in the lead with 2.5/4.
Magnus is trailing with 1.5/4 together with Radjabov and unfortunate Ivanchuk.  

Tomorrow Magnus has black against Topalov. A difficult task although Magnus managed to draw in Corus last month. 

A note on the weather; It's about 26 oC and beautiful sunshine every day in Morelia! 

Henrik Carlsen,
Morelia, February 19^th 2008