Magnus Carlsen

Bottom seeded Jan Smeets beat Ivanchuk with black! Okay, Ivanchuk lost on time on move 40, but black was certainly not worse in the end position.
In fact the day could easily have been a complete success for the Dutch players as Stellwagen had a winning position against Movsesian and Van Wely was much better against Dominguez. Both games ended draw though with Stellwagen accepting the draw in beginning time trouble after some dubious moves and Dominguez defending very well till the end. 


Against Teimur Radjabov Magnus played 1.e4 and was met with c5 2.Nf3 e6.
He felt in a creative mood and thought 3.g3 was an interesting way of deferring d4. Both players, and especially Radjabov, spent lots of time on the clock in the opening.
Magnus thought he was clearly better already after 7... Be7 8.cxd5 Bxc5.
He kept building up the pressure against the centre with the black king still on e8 and thought 14.Bxd5 would give white an advantage but that Bh6 would be even better.
After having moved, he discovered that the planned continuation was unclear due to 14...Nxe5 15.Bxg7 Nd3!
White still had an advantage in the game after 15.Rd1, but it is small. 
With his poor pawn structure, black continued to face problems throughout his long time trouble, but found a good defence to reach a double rook and two versus three pawn ending.
Magnus played on for a while, but Radjabov found a nice way of securing the draw with 53... Rg6 54.g4 Ra3 and a draw was agreed after move 60. 

Young Karjakin has struggled lately but got off to an excellent start beating Morozevich with white in a sharp Sicilian.
Black seemed okay and may even have been the one playing for a win. Then he played d5 at the wrong moment allowing 26.h6!! winning on the spot. 
The rest of the games in the A-group ended in draws.

Most of the favourites won in the B-group (Kasimdzhanov, Vallejo, Efimenko and Navara). Short drew while Motylev lost (to Navara). 
In the C-group, 15 year old top seed Wesley So beat Nijboer with black and is sharing the lead with Bosboom, Romanishin, Harika and Iturrizaga. 

Another peace of news hitting the headlines today was the cancellation of the Karlovy Vary Grand Prix tournament scheduled for December 2009. The reasons given were the withdrawal of Magnus and the change of the regulations for the cylce.
Not very surprising, the steps FIDE is taking, supposedly to strengthen the Grand Prix, have had the opposite effect. If the real purpose of the cycle change was to discredit and harm the Grand Prix, they have been quite successful. 

We're still waiting for the release of the transcript of the phone conference of December 27^th, but FIDE is completely silent on the subject.        

Tomorrow Magnus plays the black pieces against Stellwagen at 13:30. As there is a significant penalty for arriving late for the round, we may expect all games to start on time.
 
Henrik Carlsen,
Wijk aan Zee, January 17th, 2009