Magnus Carlsen

The annual Tal Blitz tournament (18 player all-play-all twice, 34 rounds) in the GUM ballroom sure is a treat for the spectators. During most rounds the spectators crowding the individual boards enjoys the spectacular games at close range while during the finish today the crowd around the leaders Ivanchuk and Kramnik was quite big.

After day one 1 Kramnik was sole leader with +5 followed by Magnus and Ivanchuk at +4 and Gelfand +3.
Magnus was more than pleased with this start taking into account serious stomach problems the night before. Hardly having slept, having a fever and unable to eat he did not feel up to the task and was on the brink of withdrawing. Fortunately he did not and the illness did not seem to affect his play which was controlled. He typically saved many difficult positions in the time trouble.

Today Magnus again started with a loss against Grischuk and moved around +4 to +5 most of the way. Having slightly easier opponents at the end he took his chances and improved the score to +8 in the end to take sole 3rd place!



Magnus played Ivanchuk in round 29 and could still theoretically catch the leaders. He made a mistake in the opening and had to give a pawn on d6 for some activity. With a rook on d2 and knight on c2 he later equalised but then blundered, allowing Rb2! creating a bind on the black pieces. Magnus had to sack an exchange and lost quickly.

Both Kramnik and Ivanchuk continued to score regularly all through day 2 and when the latter beat Kramnik in the second last round he only needed a draw against Tkachiev to secure another victory. A tremendous +9 second day performance by Ivanchuk. Congratulations!
Kramnik was known to be a top blitz played in his youth and might have needed the Tal Blitz last year as a warm up. This year he looked very impressive and ended sole 2nd today at +11.

It is interesting to see how the psychological aspects play a part during such a marathon blitz event. Generally players seems to be somewhat affected by trends and many players were on winning streaks or losing streaks for many rounds in a row.
I was particularly happy to see that Magnus never lost 2 games in a row this year! His 8 losses were fairly evenly distributed throughout the tournament. Generally he took well care of the chances he got although he was a bit unhappy about not finding the winning combinations in some hectic games as for example against Kamsky.

Having lost with black against his young rival Karjakin yesterday he was happy to take revenge today. In total Magnus scored 16 wins (and 10 draws and 8 losses), a great score!

Interestingly the final score table shows an impressive correlation with Fide rating. The first 10 has 2781, 2788, 2775, 2738, 2742, 2741, 2728, 2727, 2723, 2720 and 2718!
(Further down the list there were two expections. Early leader top ranked Morozevich (4.5/5) suffered a total melt down while young Grachev (2640) was lowest rated but ended 12th.)

Tomorrow morning we're off to Madrid and Bilbao, and hopefully Magnus will be fit for fight Tuesday 2nd at 5 PM for round 1!

Henrik Carlsen
Moscow, August 30th, 2008