Magnus Carlsen

The last round is old news, we have already received lots of congrat's on the previous posting. Thank you!

As might be expected Magnus was very very pleased with his last round victory against Bacrot.
What do you do when you are faced with the challenge of choosing strategy in the final round as black against a player who have lost his last two games when you don't want to lose because a draw will give you a very decent result while going for a win and a superb result is tempting?
Personally I would chicken out and play safe, but fortunately Magnus did not!
  
His opening choice and early manoeuvres was directed at creating an unbalanced position providing winning chances, of course preferable without taking too much risks.
After 13....Nd7 14.Nb3 f5, he knew he was slightly worse, but never felt in any real danger of losing.
24.Qa4 was probably a mistake, and Bacrot admitted after the game that he had missed the Re3-d3 plan.
26....Nf6 deserves an exclamation mark, making it very easy for white to go wrong.
Instead of 27.R7h6, the alternative Rg6 would have been strong in Magnus' opinion.

After 28.....Rxd3 black is probably already slightly better, and Magnus chose the continuation 29....Nxd5 instead of Qa4 to not allow the complications after 30.Qxf5.
After the mistake 37.Rg6, Magnus played a5 following his long term plan but missing the tactical shot Re8! winning a piece.
However, he was quite convinced that he had a winning position and it is difficult to find a clear save for white.
In the continuation Magnus played consistent while Bacrot probably made a few more accuracies, and after the white king and bishop was trapped on the 2nd row, it was just a matter of technique. 0-1.

Both Svidler and Navara enjoyed a winning streak in the last two rounds to improve their position considerably while the other top boards ended in draw.

During the tournament the tournament home page gave me the impression that the tie-break would favour his opponents Gashimov and Yue, but this was an illusion.

The regulations are very clear, there are no tie-break in each individual tournament. (The SB and Rp in the final standing of the Baku GP has no bearing what so ever.)
Consequently Carlsen, Gashimov and Yue, in alphabetical order :-), shared 1st place in Baku.

With regard to the Grand-Prix combined standing, the winners bring along 153 and a third GP point each, and for potential tie-break the 8 points may be significant (tie-break 2) and also in theory number of wins (tie-break 5) of which Magnus had 4 and the others 3 each.

We would like to thank the organiser and Global Chess for a well organised event, and the playing venue and hotel was excellent! Thank you!   

Prior to the Leko 8-game rapid match in Miscolc May 28th-June1st, Magnus will attend some promotional events, starting with two simuls in Stavanger May 10th. 

H.Carlsen
Lommedalen, May 7th 2008