Magnificent Magnus

BY: BOBBY ANG

(Abridged version of Chess Piece, BusinessWorld, 02 July 2010)

4th Kings Tournament
Medias, Romania
June 14-25, 2010

Final Standings
1 GM Magnus Carlsen NOR 2813, 7.5/10
2-3 GM Teimour Radjabov AZE 2740, GM Boris Gelfand ISR 2741, 5.5/10
4 GM Ruslan Ponomariov UKR 2733, 4.5/10
5 GM Liviu Dieter Nisipeanu ROU 2672, 4.0/10
6 GM Wang Yue CHN 2752, 3.0/10

Average ELO 2742
Category 20 Tournament

Time Control: 120 minutes for first 40 moves, 60 minutes for next 20 moves, 15 minutes for the rest of the game with 30 second increment to start on the 61st move.

Top 10 Standings in the world after this tournament:
1 GM Magnus Carlsen NOR 2826.4
2 GM Veselin Topalov BUL 2803.4
3 GM Viswanathan Anand IND 2799.8
4 GM Vladimir Kramnik RUS 2790.0
5 GM Lev Aronian ARM 2783.0
6 GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov AZE 2761.4
7 GM Alexander Grischuk RUS 2760.0
8 GM Pavel Eljanov UKR 2754.9
9 GM Alexei Shirov ESP 2748.6
10 GM Teimour Radjabov AZE 2748.3

Magnus Carlsen distanced himself further from his rating pursuers with a great victory in the Kings Tournament in Romania and pushed his ELO rating to 2826.4, the second highest ever in history. The record is held by Garry Kasparov, 2851 in 1999 (he was 36 years old at that time). Garry started off that year in Wijk aan Zee winning the so-called Game of the Millennium against Topalov and carried on with his inspired play, winning every tournament he had participated in, often with huge margins.

The Kings Tournament was Magnus’ first serious tournament after winning the 2010 Corus Wijk aan Zee event and his appearance was much awaited. He cruised along with draws in the early rounds but then started a 4-game win streak by surprising Wang Yue with a Kings Gambit in round 3 followed by victories over Nisipeanu, Ponomariov and Radjabov. He capped off the event by once again destroying Wang Yue in the last round. Carlsen is only 19 and still getting stronger by the tournament. It is not that far-fetched that he will continue this level of performance and hit 2900 within the next 2 years.

Kasparov and Carlsen went about their climb up the ELO rating ladder in different ways.

In 1999 the information age had not quite caught up with the chess world yet and Kasparov with his very strong analytical team and appreciation of the wonders of chess databases had a big advantage over everybody. He would hit them with theoretical novelties and emerge from the opening with some sort of advantage, even if only a tiny one like more mobility. His magnificent skills would take over and take care of the rest.

Nowadays everybody has a laptop and gigantic four-million games databases with everything classified per opening, so you would be on equal footing come the start of play. Magnus Carlsen is theoretically well-prepared, but getting a plus or minus from the opening is irrelevant for him. Magnus will refuse to take a draw and proceed to outplay you in the middlegame or endgame.

Of course, he will once in a while win ala Kasparov:

Nisipeanu,Liviu Dieter (2672) -- Carlsen,Magnus (2813) [B76]
Kings’ Tournament Medias Bazna/Romania (5), 19.06.2010
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Nisipeanu resigned because of 31...Rd1+ 32.Rxd1 Qxd1+ 33.Ka2 Re1 his king is going to get it.