Magnus Carlsen

Round 2 yesterday featured two more decided games.

Adams won a pawn in the middle game against Cheparinov and with pawns on both king and queen side he managed to win the rook endgame. Mamedyarov sacrificed or blundered an exchange for a pawn against Inarkiev who wrapped up the game efficiently to move back to 50%.

Magnus defended the black pieces against Svidler in the Ruy Lopez and was hoping for an unbalanced situation. However, after 15.a4 he understood that he was worse and after a long thought he had to defend against the invasion of the white queen with Qe7 and effectively giving up his ambitions in the game.
White had some pressure on the queenside and Magnus chose to free himself with 19....c5.
My computer dislikes the sack but the players agreed in the press conference that it leads to a drawn ending. However, due to the pawn structure Magnus had to defend quite accurately in the 3 versus 2 pawn rook ending and was honestly relieved when Peter repeated the position for the third time.
He could well have tortured Magnus another hour or two.

Before round 3 Adams, Grichuk, Kamsky and Radjabov had +1 with Magnus in shared 5th at 50%.

As white against Inarkiev Magnus needed a win and he chose an opening he has played a couple of times before.
Magnus thought he was slightly better after 10.0-0 Nh5 and after 12.Rfe1 Na5 but after the mistake 13.Bb5 he suddenly discovered that he was clearly worse due to 15...e5! 
Magnus kept on making some inaccurate moves and the situation looked pretty difficult when he finally spent lots of time trying to find a way out and found 19.Bd1. 
He thought it would be difficult to defend against the black kingside attack but Inarkiev continued to spend too much time on the clock and played 24...Nd2 as a practical solution in the ensuing time trouble.
The position was pretty equal but Magnus tried to complicate with 26.e5! and after 27...f6 ?! black is still OK but has to defend accurately against the threats on the white squares.
Just before the time control Inarkiev played 34...c4 ? giving up the c-pawn after which the ending is very difficult for him.
After the time control Magnus finished in style with the combined threats of the a-pawn and white square domination around the black king.
Puuuh, why does he have to make us so nervous:-)

Four more games was decided today with Karjakin beating Adams in a seemingly even endgame, Grischuk securing another black win against Navara this time, Gashimov impressingly beat Svidler and Bacrot won a rook a endgame against Cheparinov in which the latter overpressed.

With 9 out of 21 games with decisive ending, spectators and organisers should be fairly satisfied despite a few games ending in repetition of moves.

Grishuk has taken a clear lead with 2,5 points ahead of Magnus, Gashimov, Kamsky, Karjakin and Radjabov at 2 while at the bottom Cheparinov is in real trouble at 0/3.

Peter from Chessvibes is working for the organiser and there are lots of videos from the press conferences at the tournament home page (http://baku2008.fide.com/).

Baku offers exiting sightseeing opportunities. We haven't been much around yet, but a visit to the "old town" by the harbour is classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and a visit is a must during our Baku stay.   

After the game and dinner we played some table tennis today.
Magnus is hoping to get more energetic in the rounds to come as he hasn't felt really fit for fight during the first three rounds.

Henrik Carlsen,
Baku, April 23th 2008