Some say he’s lucky. Some say he’s really good. Some say his opponents choked. It may be a combination of all of them. But the kid manages to find ways to win game after game. With his 4th straight win today over Radjabov, he continues to climb on the rating chart.
Round 7 results:
| Carlsen, Magnus | – Radjabov, Teimour | 1-0 | |||
| Nisipeanu, Liviu-Dieter | – Gelfand, Boris | 0-1 | |||
| Ponomariov, Ruslan | – Wang Yue | ½ |
Standings after 7 rounds:
| 1. | Carlsen, Magnus | g | NOR | 2813 | 5½ | |||||||||||
| 2. | Gelfand, Boris | g | ISR | 2741 | 4½ | |||||||||||
| 3. | Radjabov, Teimour | g | AZE | 2740 | 3½ | |||||||||||
| 4-6. | Nisipeanu, Liviu-Dieter | g | ROU | 2672 | 2½ | |||||||||||
| 4-6. | Wang, Yue | g | CHN | 2752 | 2½ | |||||||||||
| 4-6. | Ponomariov, Ruslan | g | UKR | 2733 | 2½ |
Official website: http://sah.turneulregilor.com
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Susan: He is not a kid anymore, he’s 19 🙂
OK, yesterdays win against Pono, was a wild west game. But todays win against Radjabov was magic with practically speaking perfect moves all through.He played the endgame better than Rybka4 on ChessOK. A game for the books!
When Kasparov retired from Chess, I though that I would never enjoy other GM games with the same excitement I felt analyzing his games. How wrong I was! Magnus Carlsen games are masterpieces which we will be analyzing and learning from decaces from now.
Carlsen is among the best end-players, but not among the best opening-players.
However, he is a genious with positional and tactical play in complicated middle games; – which is in deed the heart of chess.
When he also adds some more opening theory to his play, he will be unbeatable for the next two decades.
Anon 3:01:00 said:
“Carlsen is among the best end-players, but not among the best opening-players. “
Really? I think you might want to do more research on that statement. If we go back to all the tournaments he has played in the last 3 years, you will see that he is one of the few GM’s out there playing aggresive openings. Just for a quick recap: He demolished Topalov with the Alekhine Defence last year, have won games using the french, the kings gambit, the sicilian, the grunfeld, the indian, etc. When was the last time you saw Anand, Topalov or Kramnik play one of those openings?
Just the fact that Carlsen is still employing e4 sets him apart from all GM’s out there.
Thought experiment: Let’s say you use a strong computer engine running on powerful hardware and analyze the recent white-games of Anand, Kramnik and Carlsen (against top-notch opponents). I would think that at around move number 16, you will find that Anand and Kramnik typically often enjoy a computer evaluation of their position at +0.35 wheras Carlsen frequently is a tad below (at ~0.0).
Some people use this to feed the argument that Carlsen’s opening play remains to be improved.
In practical play, all the evidence, however, seems to indicate that Carlsen really only needs get his opponents into unchartered and/or unfamiliar territory in faily equal positions in order to churn out his wins.
He doesn’t need the .1-.3 decimal point advantage out of the opening. He only needs to get his opponent to disembarked from the silicon prep.
Needless to say, if you are willing to venture into any variation out of the opening that is considered as giving “equal chances” while retaining complexity, you have a much greater opening arsenal at your disposal, than if you adhere to the mantra that openings should always leave you with a slight (but far from winning) advantage.
I personally believe that Carlsen is quite aware of the sacrifices he makes in the opening, and that he can, and will play more like Anand and Kramnik is he wants to.
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Ah, my demon familiar, S’ym.
Come to your mistress!