Magnus Carlsen

Returning from family vacation 140 km northeast of Oslo we were meet by 10 cm fresh snow on the ground in Lommedalen. Right now the temperature is below minus 10 degrees Celsius (but no polar bears outside though...) 

Yesterday Magnus was up against World Champion V.Anand. Despite Anand's very pleasant conduct whenever he is away from the chess board it  seemed as if he had planned to spend another afternoon intimidating Magnus over the board.
Magnus played the Alekhine and Anand got both space and threats in the centre. Fritz told me that Magnus was gradually improving his position with 17...e5 and his next 5 moves but when Magnus deviated from the machine preference Ncd7 with 23....Nb7 he is simply losing due to the nice queen side pawn advance (c5 bxc5 b5 cxb5 Nxb5) found by Anand.
Anand finished in style picking up the loose black pawns after Magnus had to sack his knight for two pawns (including the c7 pawn).     

Fortunately the rapid game turned out differently.   
After 1.c4 e5 2.g3 c6 3.d4 e4 4.d5 black equalised fairly early but they reached a position with a lot of dynamics. Anand chose to allow Magnus to capture the e-pawn but probably has sufficient counterplay.
Anand plays very quickly and normally this is good for him and problematic for the opponent.
However, his 17....a5 giving up another pawn probably deserves a question mark.
Magnus thought for about 10 minutes and took on h7 after which 20.Qb1+ wins back the piece. He had calculated well and knew he could avoid mate.
After some more inaccuracies from black Magnus was clearly better when Anand dropped a whole rook with 27.Rxe3 because 28.Rxf7 wins either the queen after Kxf7 fxe3 or both rooks after Qxf7 fxe3.
Magnus would normally not miss such tactics but partly due to his time trouble and partly because he did not expect such a mistake from Anand he looked for a simple winning line and was happy to play 28.Qxc8 etc keeping his king protected and having two extra pawns.
After exchanging queens Magnus did not have any problems securing an easily won rook endgame and Anand resigned.
Magnus won 2 blitz games against Anand at Iceland in 2006 but this is the first rapid victory (and his first classical game victory is still to come :-) ). 
Aronian beat Topalov 1,5-0,5 to take a one point lead ahead of Anand with Magnus in shared 3^rd.
Morozevich won another blindfold game to take a clear sole lead with 5/7. 

On day 8 today, Magnus felt comfortable playing Mamedyarov as he has a fairly good score against him recently.
The blindfold game was a thriller that would have been reasonably exciting even for a normal rapid game.  
They played the same Sicilian Paulsen line with 6.Nxc6 as Magnus defended against Anand in Monaco last year.

Mamedyarov decided to take the pawn on b2 after which he has to defend quite accurately. Magnus was happy to find 15.Be5 and 18.g4 after which the black rooks in the h-file are more of a problem than an asset due to the inactivity of the black queen and bishop. He felt he was clearly better after 18....Rxh2 19.Be5. After exchanging one rook black tried to activate his queenside with c5 but white maintained a clear edge with 22.Qd3.

22....f5 23.Rb1! simply wins a piece.
Mamedyarov spent most of his remaining time without finding a good continuation and ended up with a queen + 5 pawns against the white queen + rook + 2 pawns.
After a few checks he resigned. 1-0. 

In the rapid game Magnus went for the Queen Indian and white was slightly better after the opening. Magnus decided to play c5 accepting a weak pawn on c5 after the knight exchanges and spent many minute before playing 17....g5 18.Bg3 g4! 19.Nd2 Qg5.
Magnus was quite happy with his position due to the kingside activity and the weak white bishops.
Obviously his opponent also took the kingside threats very seriously and after a long thought Mamedyarov went for 24.Ne5 Bxe5 25.Bxa6 after which Magnus thought he was better.
Mamedyarov played a few more inaccuracies probably in the belief that black had to exchange queens after 29.Qe3, but Magnus found Qh2! and black is simply a pawn up in the ending. And with queens on the board the knight is better than the bishop.
Mamedyarov played as if he had mentally resigned and after black had started to advance his kingside pawns he resigned in face of material losses. 0-1 and another 2-0 victory for Magnus today!  

Having won 3 games in a row Magnus is of course extremely pleased with the current standing although he is still a full point behind Aronian. Magnus is also 2^nd in the blindfold (behind Moro) and shared 2^nd in the rapid).
He faces a very tough programme (Kramnik, Leko and Morozevich) after the free day Monday but in fact Aronian faces exactly the same opponents!

Magnus has had few peaceful games so far resulting in a +7-4=5 score.
The 7 wins bring him up to a total of 17 wins against 2680+ opponents in 43 games this year!
(Maybe he has had some luck but there obviously must be some good games among the 17 as well :-)

Henrik Carlsen
Lommedalen, March 23rd 2008.