Magnus Carlsen

Mainly travelling to countries speaking Indo-European languages, we are normally not surprised to find many known words, both due to the common root of historic nouns and verbs and common loan words describing modern concepts.
But despite the fact that the Indo-European languages now spoken by half the globe had a common ancestor that probably spread out some 5000 years ago from the Russian steppes not far northwest of Azerbaijan, the Azeri language is similar to Turkish, originating on the steppes much further east.
The more surprising it has been to recognize many words also over here.
Most words are of course completely different, but many undertandable words obviously has migrated via Turkish, Russian or directly via media in modern time (for instance concert, stadium, bulvarda, olimpic, futbol,ekskursiya, restoraninda, avtobus etc.)

Round 11 saw only one decisive game.
Home hero Radjabov did not seem to have taken much benefit from the free day and lost quite badly to come-back-kid Cheparinov scoring his third win.
Magnus had the white pieces against tail-ender Navara and was eager to revenge his Corus 2007 loss as well as improving his position.
Navara surprised him by repeating the same Zaitsev variation in Ruy Lopez that he had lost with a few months back. Coming up with a novelty 21...Bb7 the computers says it is equal while both players afterwards agreed that white has a much more pleasant position. After trading down to a rook and queen endgame, Magnus was planning to put pressure on the black weaknesses when he thought he spotted a winning combination starting with 35.a4. Fortunately for Navara who had not foreseen this possibility, and unfortunately for Magnus, it does not work. Magnus had missed that e4 would be hanging after 39.g3. Magnus had to play 39.Qa2 instead forcing an immediate draw.
Bacrot and Karjakin (as black against Svidler and Gashimov respectively) had very promising positions but failed to convert the advantage this time.

Yesterday Magnus was black against leader Grishuk and played the Slav defence for the first time in 15 months. A surprised Grishuk spent much time but came up with some nice "silent" moves like 12.Be2 and 13.Bh4. Afterwards Magnus thought his break 14....c5 was premature although the computers give their support. After 18.Nxd4 he thought he was in trouble, and although Qd6 may hold tactically, he chose to enter a worse ending with Bxd4. Grishuk envisaged a crushing ending after 22....Rxb2 23.Bxf6 gxf6 24.d5 but Magnus had seen the subtle 22.....Rfd8 after which there probably are several ways for black to reach a drawn ending. 
Grichuk chose to keep his black squared bishop as well as the rook but with 4 pawns each he went for repetition of moves despite his free pawn in the b-file. Draw.
Of course Magnus had needed more than a draw to be in contention for 1st, but under the circumstances he was quite pleased to have avoided a worse result yesterday.
Wang Yue beat Svidler in style. The latter had probably missed 21.Bg4! after which he chose to give an exchange for a pawn.
Bacrot-Inarkiev was a short wild game and both players were low on time when Bacrot inexplicably blundered his queen with 23.Qe7+?? (There's a knight on g8....)

Before the last two rounds Grishuk and Yue is in the lead with 7/11, closely followed by Gashimov at 6,5 and Magnus, Adams and Mamedyarov at 6.

Today Magnus has white against Adams. Let's hope for an interesting fight!

Henrik Carlsen,
Baku, May 4th 2008