Magnus Carlsen

Just at the blogging update regularity was beginning to improve slightly, the internet connection at the hotel has been very very slow for the last few days. With the press room available over at the playing venue it is not a watertight excuse, but it is the best I've got:-)

Except for the games of Ivanchuk and Morozevich, most other players have mainly resorted to draws so far. 

In round 2 against Stellwagen, Magnus surprised his opponent in the opening playing the Berlin Defence and equalised from the opening despite the white initiative. When he played Bd6 he saw the drawing line ending with Rd7 but could not find a better alternative.
With white low on time already Magnus decided to avoid the repetition and retreated his bishop to f6 despite being worse as he did not see a winning continuation for white.
Stellwagen continued to exploit his initiative and Magnus was left to defend and in the end a draw was agreed. 
Ivanchuk and Morozevich fought back winning against Yue and Van Wely while leaders Smeets and Karjakin drew. 

In round 3 Magnus had white against Movsesian. He seemed to get a slight initiative from the opening but Movsesian played very accurately. Black had a safe heaven for his king on e6 and after exchanging queens the ending was easily drawn.
Ivanchuk and Morozevich both lost again, the former in a terrible time scramble against Radjabov's famous KID and the latter against a ruthlessly effective Kamsky. 
Movsesian beat Adams to join the (many) leaders at 2/3. 

Yesterday Magnus had another white, this time opposite Aronian, someone whom Magnus has enjoyed a very good score against since the Candidates in May 2007.
After the opening Magnus was happy with his position. He was better and it is not obvious how black should solve his problems.
Magnus decided to allow the black sacrifice Nxe3 as he (correctly) thought it would be clearly better for white.
After fxe3 Rxe3 white has two alternatives; Bd3 or Rd3. Magnus thought both alternatives were about equally good for white, and he went for Rd3 to avoid having a black rook sitting on e3.
But, he had missed blacks move Qxb4 capturing a third pawn for the sacked knight.
The next few moves where probably slightly dubious from both sides and due to the bind on f1 Magnus had to find and make Rxb6 work to maintain an advantage. He thought the endgame should be winning for white, but Aronian defended tenaciously. When Magnus had to give up his h-pawn the winning chances disappeared. In retrospect Magnus is starting to doubt that there ever was a win in the ending.
All A-group games ended draw despite fierce fighting on many boards.   

The long game meant going straight to the sponsor dinner in the Chess Pavilion. We had an excellent meal and as usual it was followed by a simul between a young player and Corus managers and organisers. 

In the morning before round 4 Signe and I had used the nice weather to walk over to the channel leading into Amsterdam. The sea waves caused by the strong western wind, the monumental mile long pier, the broad channel and the sluices bringing the vessels down (!) 3 or 4 meters to the river beneath sure is an impressive sight!  

Magnus has had some long games already and will enjoy the free day today before facing up to Ivanchuk as black in round 5 tomorrow.

Henrik Carlsen,
Wijk aan Zee, January 21st, 2009