Magnus Carlsen

Four days rest including the 24 hour travel sounds OK, but it's really hard adjusting 7 hours backwards, especially if you got up late Mexican time over there. Magnus has been out walking a little every day but we haven't had any real exercise like on the free days in Morelia yet. (Plans are made for Sunday though.)

The players seemed to have migrated from the jetlagged zombie-like appearance yesterday and the day before and showed good fighting spirit today. 



The playing venue Theatro Cervantes is situated in the centre of Linares in the Cervantes street. (Amusingly I'm reading Don Quixote during the round!) 

Anand had an edge on the white side of a Sveshnikov against Shirov, but Shirov kept finding counterplay and reached a somewhat worse but probably drawn ending. Somewhere Shirov probably went wrong and Anand used his trademark efficiency to reign in the whole point and a one point overall lead in the tournament. 

Radjabov played an interesting (but necessary) piece sack against Leko. After a tense attack from Radjabov and active defence by Leko a draw was agreed just before the time control in an unbalanced but fairly equal position. 

Topalov looked very comfortable as black against Aronian. Topalov played for win and allowed an exchange acrifice by Aronian. Topalov made a seemingly incomprehensible error with Qxg2, and the ending is difficult for black. Aronian advanced the d-pawn to the 6th rank and marched his king to secure the full point. 


Magnus went for e5 and the Ruy Lopez against Ivanchuk and according to conventional theory black is OK after 6.Bxc6 dxc6.
However, Magnus could not remember the theory and somewhere he obviously went wrong.
After 10.Qc2 Ivanchuk had spent more than an hour on the clock but was clearly better.
To avoid simplifications and a worse ending Magnus chose complications with Qd7 and 12...0-0-0 a piece down but with the Bf5 pinning the rook on e4.
At this point the computer gives Ivanchuk a clear advantage but for humans it is not easy to find the best continuation for white.
15.b3 was probably a little inaccurate and after 17.Nd4 black may again enter a worse but maybe drawn ending with Bxe4.   Magnus chose complications and after 18.c5 white has to find Qd1 to maintain a significant advantage.
Short on time Ivanchuk played Qc4 and after the exchanges the endgame is fairly equal but unbalanced and difficult to play for white with little time left.
Ivanchuk had 54 seconds left for 12 moves and managed to play reasonably well but due to small inaccuracies his position went continuously downhill until the time control.
After 40.Nd3 the arbiter stopped the game as Ivanchuk had lost on time but fortunately the position was winning for black anyway.

After making some serious mistakes in the opening, Magnus efficiently complicated the position and played accurately.
Ivanchuk did miss some promising continuations but the loss cannot be ascribed to a single blunder in any way.
Still Magnus was obviously more relieved than satisfied with the full point today, and is now in shared 2^nd place with Aronian at +1. 

Magnus has had 3 blacks and 1 white in rounds 5-8 and has scored an impressive +2 in these games. 

During lunch today I enjoyed looking over the decoration wall pictures from the 1999-2005 tournaments. Surprisingly to me the format changed two times also in this period.
In 1999 there were 8 players, the next two years 6 and from 2002 onwards 7 players. After Kasparov's retirement in 2005 the format was changed again with 8 players double round robin partly in Morelia and partly in Linares.
Kasparov was the only player to participate in all the 7 tournaments 1999-2005, explaining why the organisers looked for a change of format again following his retirement.
Leko, Anand, Shirov and Vallejo Pons were other frequent participants in this period. One female only (J.Polgar) participated in one of these tournaments. 

Tomorrow Magnus has white against Shirov and we can expect a tough fight.

Henrik Carlsen,
Linares, February 28th 2008.