'Opponents Handing It To Carlsen' At Norway Chess

Magnus Carlsen has a chance to win the 2019 Altibox Norway Chess tournament with a round to spare. On Wednesday, Levon Aronian defeated Yu Yangyi to take over second place, but he is trailing the leader by two points.

Aronian joined the commentary studio after his Armageddon victory and was asked about his chances to overtake Carlsen, leading to this expressive exchange with Judit Polgar:

Aronian: "I don't know, his opponents are apparently just handing it to him!"
Polgar: "Well, you were number one in this, right?"
Aronian: "Yes, I started the trend and now everybody thinks it's the right thing to do!"
Polgar: "You showed the way."
Aronian: "It's ridiculous!"

The remark was made in what was indeed a relatively easy round for Carlsen. He wasn't thoroughly tested as Black in the standard game, and received a two-pawn gift right out of the opening in the Armageddon.

Carlsen and Wesley So were the first to finish in this round. Still seeing no reason to say goodbye to his Sveshnikov, the tournament leader this time faced the old 11.c3 line, which was played by Garry Kasparov in the 1990s. It was also Anish Giri's choice against Carlsen twice.

For quite a while it was considered that Black should play Bf6-g5 before White goes h2-h4, but as Carlsen showed, even with a more passive king's bishop, Black is absolutely fine.

So was focusing really hard at the start of the Armageddon, holding his head in his hands, while Carlsen casually sacrificed a piece with 12...a5. Few would have taken that knight.

A few moves later, Carlsen frowned on So's decision to push his d-pawn up the board. It seems that the American grandmaster had expected Black to take it with the bishop or the knight (which both don't give much compensation for White either) and that 16...Qxd5 was just not on his radar.

The game was more or less decided at that moment. Twenty moves later, Carlsen was fine with a move repetition in an endgame with two extra pawns. With 6/6 he is still on a perfect Armageddon score.

Aronian himself used an interesting pawn sacrifice in the Scotch Four Knights to equalize his black game with Yu Yangyi. The move 9...Bg4!? steps away from most of the theory there, although quite a few grandmasters have tried it out after Vidit Gujrathi introduced it against Wei Yi 14 months ago.

"Everybody has analyzed it," said Aronian.

The Armenian GM reached the draw without problems, and after surviving a sharp Nimzo opening phase, he did the same in the Armageddon:

Fabiano Caruana vs. Vishy Anand was one of those classical games where the shortened time control (two hours for the whole game with a 10-second increment after move 40) had its impact on the quality of play.

The American grandmaster got a long-lasting advantage out of the opening after Anand had not reacted well to the almost new move 12.Re1 in the Open Spanish. Caruana quickly built up a winning attack, but then failed to find several winning moves. 

"This is really embarrassing," Caruana said. "I basically panicked because I was low on time. This was a horrible game."

"At the end I was kind of relieved. It almost made me forget about what I missed," said Caruana about his Armageddon game, which he described as "a pretty clean game."

Ding Liren scored an excellent victory against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov—the only classical win of the round. The Chinese player said he had prepared this 3.f3 Grunfeld on the rest day, and "couldn't believe his memory was so bad" when he saw 22...Bxe5, which wasn't his main line.

Ding started thinking, with the knowledge that it wasn't Black's best move, and came up with the excellent reply 23.Bd3, after which 23...Na4 was already the losing mistake, he felt. Strong calculation did the rest.

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave scored 1.5 points playing the white pieces against tail-ender Alexander Grischuk. The standard game wasn't a great success for the Frenchman, who could force a move repetition in a very original way at the end. MVL thought it hadn't been seen elsewhere yet.

For the Armageddon, MVL entered the Fianchetto Grunfeld where he postponed his castling.

"At least in this sort of position there's always some kind of play, so I was not worried about things getting too dry," MVL said. "I could have been concerned about getting worse but that was another issue!"

Playing with a pawn majority on the queenside, Vachier-Lagrave had missed a defensive move from Grischuk, but out of necessity he found a nice reply, after which his opponent quickly collapsed. The end was pretty, but also easy for a player of this caliber: 

2019 Altibox Norway Chess | Round 7 Standings

The pairings for round eight are Carlsen vs. Yu Yangyi, Aronian vs. Caruana, Vachier-Lagrave vs. Ding Liren, Mamedyarov vs. So and Grischuk vs. Anand. Then, in the last round, we'll see Caruana vs. Carlsen, Yu Yangyi vs. Mamedyarov, Anand vs. Aronian, Ding Liren vs. Grischuk and So vs. Vachier-Lagrave. 

If Carlsen beats his opponent on Thursday and Aronian doesn't, the world champion will add one more tournament victory to his collection.

The Altibox Norway Chess tournament takes place June 3-12 in the Clarion Hotel Energy and June 12-14 in the Stavanger Concert hall in Stavanger, Norway. New this year is that players who draw their game will play an Armageddon game right after (with the same colors).

Also new is a shorter the time control in the classical games: two hours for the whole game, with an increment of 10 seconds after move 40.

The games start 5 p.m. local time (CEST), which is 11 a.m. Eastern and 8 a.m. Pacific. You can follow the games here as part of our live portal with daily commentary by the Chessbrahs.

The round seven coverage by the Chessbrahs.

Previous reports:

• Blunders Galore In Norway Chess Round 6
• Norway Chess Round 5: Carlsen Increases Lead, Aronian Escapes
• Carlsen Maintains Lead In Enthralling Round 4 Norway Chess
• Carlsen Surges To The Top In Norway Chess Round 3
• Mamedyarov Beats Anand In Standard Game, Leads Norway Chess
• Norway Chess Opens With 5 Armageddon Games
• MVL Wins Blitz As Revamped Norway Chess Begins
• Norway Chess New Format: Armageddon After Each Draw