Magnus Carlsen

Magnus played 1.d4 against Volokitin. He had of course noticed how the Ukrainian misplayed the middle game against Van Wely in round 8.
The appearant novelty 14.Qe4 lead to a better ending for white.
Magnus needed a draw to secure tournament victory with a round to go, and was quite happy to be in a position to put pressure on Volokitin without too much risk.
After black advanced his b-pawn, Magnus felt very comfortable with the position and played fast. Maybe too fast. Having played 23.b3? he immediately saw that Volokitin could respond b4! so that he should have played e4 instead. 
Magnus might still have an edge but when he chose 30.Nd5 (instead of maybe Nh5) it might not be so difficult for black to hold.
Volokitin deserves praise, he defended very well in the rest of the game, for instance when finding only-moves like 33....Rd7 and 48....Bg2. 
In the end Magnus overpressed slightly and had to suffer a rook ending a pawn down for some moves before a draw was agreed.
With 7.5/10 Magnus has already won the tournament! 
He did not look that happy right after the game as he was very tired (and still a bit angry with himself for having played 23...b3), but after a while he really appreciated the outright victory and great performance in Aerosvit 2008!

We had dinner at the Foros Pizza together with two representatives of Norwegian main television (NRK) who has arrived to report from the tournament finish.

There were two decisive games yesterday.
It was interesting to see Shirov fight his way back. After his 2 out of 2 he has had many nice positions but scored miserably until his excellent win against Svidler yesterday.
Svidler had a protected pawn on f2, but couldn't avoid the nice mating net created by the white king and two rooks.

Van Wely seemed in reasonably good shape from the opening against Ivanchuk, but after one or two questionable moves he went down quickly losing a piece in Ivanchuk's king side attack around move 20.
And it was of course a great game by Ivanchuk who moved into shared second with Eljanov at 6 points.
(As predicted by many, Magnus' first round win against Ivanchuk may very well turn out to be decisive to the tournament result.)

Today Magnus has black against 4th placed S.Karjakin. He is of course interested in playing a good game against his rival youngster.
With some of the pressure gone by already having secured tournament victory, let's hope for an exciting game!

Henrik Carlsen,
Foros, Crimea, June 19th 2008