Blinding Start At Amber
Vassily Ivanchuk beat Magnus Carlsen 2-0 in their first round clash at the Amber tournament.
World #1 Carlsen now faces the tough task of trying to bounce back against last year's winner Lev Aronian in round 2. You can read Carlsen's reaction to this setback at his blog. He doesn't mention his shocking choice of 1.a3 for his first move in the blindfold game, so presumably it was intentional and not a mouse slip!
Former FIDE champion Ruslan Ponomariov achieved the only other whitewash of the day, beating Boris Gelfand in both their blindfold and rapid games, and gaining revenge for his loss in the World Cup last year.
It was a fiercely fought opening round, with only 2 draws out of 12 games, and all of the blindfold games proving decisive!
Carlsen's magic orange juice failed to save him in round one (picture from official site)
The full results in round 1:
| Blind | Ponomariov-Gelfand | 1-0 |
| Grischuk-Kramnik | 1-0 | |
| Dominguez-Gashimov | 0-1 | |
| Blind | Carlsen-Ivanchuk | 0-1 |
| Svidler-Smeets | 1-0 | |
| Karjakin-Aronian | 1-0 | |
| Rapid | Gelfand-Ponomariov | 0-1 |
| Kramnik-Grischuk | 1-0 | |
| Gashimov-Dominguez | ½-½ | |
| Rapid | Ivanchuk-Carlsen | 1-0 |
| Smeets-Svidler | ½-½ | |
| Aronian-Karjakin | 1-0 |
Some games from the opening round are below. All the games are available at the official site.
