Magnus Carlsen

As white against Gelfand in the blindfold on day 5, Magnus played a good game in the 6.h3 Najdorf variation.
He attacked the black position from both sides and finished in style.
In the rapid game Magnus sacrificed a pawn for active play and after too ambitious play by Gelfand Magnus had a small advantage.
Later in the game Gelfand defended very accurately and in the rook ending Magnus could not escape the perpetual checks. Draw. 

In round 6 Magnus faced Topalov and had the white pieces in the blindfold game.
In retrospect it is not difficult to explain why the game took such a disastrous turn.
He could not sleep until very late the day before and in addition he chose a variation inspired by one of my blitz games on ICC he happened to steal a glance at a year back (and this is definitely not due to family affection as he is rightfully very critical to my chess in general :-).
He was quite happy about the opening though and after 15.Qa4 Qb6 he thought he would be better after Qc2.
As happens sometimes when you are not in top shape he probably got too impatient when playing the dubious 16.Bd2 and 18.Re3.
Afterwards Magnus says that it was simply ridiculous to allow 16.Bf5!
Topalov made many good moves and after 21.Qh7 he was simply winning.
Fortunately Magnus did not give up and as Topalov missed several very promising continuations the position was a bit unclear after 30 moves.
But, after exchanging queens on a6 black is much better due to the pawn on g4 despite the fairly equal material.
A piece up in the ending Topalov again played quite well for a while and could have decided the game with 49...d3 but somehow failed to find the win.
After a long fight Magnus managed to reach a drawn ending with 3 pawns against the black knight.
Puh, several narrow escapes by Magnus, but this can easily happen in a blindfold game.
With the draw Magnus keeps his sole lead in the blindfold section and has already captured as many points in 6 games as in all 11 last year! 

In the second game Magnus got a lot of activity after his pawn sack 14.e4 and he thought he could at least reach an equal ending.
Topalov gave up an exchange for another pawn and was slightly better.
Magnus underestimated his problems in the ending. He felt he should have chosen a more active continuation tan in the game where he allowed 26.Bxf7 (which he had missed), after which he has to keep finding a lot of only moves to avoid disaster in the endgame.
Topalov tried for a long time but after nearly 70 moves he repeated a position for the third time and a draw was agreed. 

Lots of draws in round 6 (for a change) although Anand went into sole 2^nd place after beating Karjakin in the blindfold.

Aronian is still sole leader (7,5/12) and Magnus is in shared 3^rd (6,5/12) with 4 more players. 

Personally I?m impressed with Magnus performance so far. Despite some serious blunders he has a plus score and has already won 4 games. 

Today Magnus plays world champion Anand and is hoping to improve his poor score against him. 

Henrik Carlsen
Solør family estate, March 22nd 2008.