Magnus Carlsen

Before round 5 yesterday we tried the tennis facilities in the pleasant sunshine.



Magnus wore his FAST T-shirt and it turned out to be another lucky T-shirt!
(FAST Search & Transfer is his main sponsor and share his ambition of becoming the best in their field. They are a billion dollar search engine company and was purchased by Microsoft this spring.)

Magnus played 1.d4 again and Shirov chose the Slav defence instead of his successful Gruenfeld from round 1. Magnus again opted for the relatively innocent Bxf6-line and deviated from his 3rd round game against Van Wely with 8.Rc1. Shirov's position seemed a bit cramped and despite his bishop pair white was probably slightly better. 

When Shirov played 16....Nf8 to really start his counterplay, Magnus, somewhat surprisingly for many spectators, decided to swap his powerful e5-knight against the seemingly weak black bishop on d7. The reason was that he could not find a way to maintain an advantage with other continuations and settled for another slightly better endgame.

After Shirov freed himself with the 29....e5 break Magnus felt he had winning chances due to all the black weaknesses. White consistently improved the position but at a critical moment allowed 36....Rc5, which solves most of black's problems.
In the continuation Magnus seriously considered to repeat moves on a couple of occasions as he did not seem to have any realistic winning chances.

However, also this time his opponent seemingly mismanaged his time left.
As Magnus continued to find new threats, Shirov entered time trouble around move 50.
After defending well for a while, Shirov started to go astray in the tricky position, and when Magnus set up a final mating trap, the position is objectively drawn but Shirov blundered and resigned in face of mate in 2!

Main commentator GM Golubev in the doorway of the majestetic playing venue next to the hotel.

Today Magnus was white against Alekseev and after getting only a slight edge from the Queen Indian opening, he found an interesting pawn sacrifice that probably surprised most spectators, 14.b4?!
However he had missed the response Nc5! after which black is at least slightly better. 
Magnus again spent lots of time evaluating the alternative continuations.
Magnus thought the ending after 16.....Bd6 and sacrificing the rook on b7 would have been drawish despite only one pawn compensation for the exchange.
Alekseev probably wanted to avoid too much complexity and instead played the probably equally strong Rc8.
After exchange of rooks and 18.Qb1 Magnus is a pawn down but has some initiative. 
Alekseev thought for more than 20 minutes, so that both players where down to 30 minutes, and finally opted for the fairly safe 18....a5 accompanied by a draw offer.
Magnus did not have a very good feeling after having missed 15...Nc5, and was also slightly worse so he accepted the early draw. After all a reasonably good result.

Shirov-Karjakin was the game of the day. Shirov sacked a piece a la Topalov-Kramnik in Corus and went on to sack his queen as well! With quite precise play from both, the game finally ended in a perpetual and drawn like all the other games today.

Entering the free day tomorrow, Magnus is in the lead with impressive 5/6 ahead of Karjakin and Volokitin at 3,5.

Time for Euro 2008!

Henrik C.
Foros, June 13th, 2008