Hi all,

Magnus Carlsen has just finished another fantastic tournament in Foros, Ukraine. He managed to remain undefeated and chalked up five wins. In this field that means a 2877 performance rating. Now, virtually he is the number 2 in the world with a 2791 rating which is only 7 points shy of World Champion Anand who has 2798. The big question however is: Will Fide rate this event for the upcoming 1st of July list?

As stated by Chessvibes.com FIDE originally intended to do so and confirmed this to Chessvibes.com. However a day later they retracted that statement stating that the deadline of the 15th (june) can only be foregone for tournaments which are in the FIDE handbook. Apparantly Aerosvit Foros is not in the FIDE handbook, which we can imagine. But hey, the 2007 Morelia/Linares tournament was also not in the FIDE handbook but was included in the april 2007 list foregoing the then time deadline.

Anyway, I would like to see Carlsen in the no. 2 spot by the 1st of July. What do you think?

For now let's enjoy some of the games he played in Foros. He started out with a very mature win over Ivanchuk in round one. After Big Mag had avoided a repetition of moves Ivanchuk apparently felt obliged to complicate matters and go for the win. But in the end he pressed too hard and cool Magnus cruised to victory.

Then he beat Van Wely in the third round making use of his better bishop in a fine endgame.

In the fourth round he beat Eljanov with the black pieces in what will probably become a famous endgame of rook and pawn versus two kinghts.

Then in the fifth round Alexey Shirov was his victim when the latter was uncautious and allowed a sudden mating attack.

And finally in the seventh round he beat Nisipeanu using ... the Dragon! I'm not sure if Nisipeanu was surprised or not, since Carlsen had played the Dragon earlier this year in Baku against Radjabov, winning with it. Anyhow, Nisipeanu played without ambition and saddled himself with some weak pawns on the queenside. When Magnus could get an even stronger grip on the position with a well-judged exchange sacrifice, the win was just around the corner.

If you like you can get in-depth chess technical commentary on three of these wins. I cannot post the videos here, they are longer then 10 minutes. You can find them here:

http://www.chessedelic.com/tag/magnus-carlsen/

Enjoy!