Carlsen ready for Monaco

Magnus Carlsen seems ready for Monaco. In March the yearly rapid and blindfold tournament Melody Amber will take place there, and this weekend a Scandinavian group of four played a blindfold tournament as a preparation for Magnus, on the island of Funen, Denmark. His co-participants were the GM's Peter Heine Nielsen and Emanuel Berg and the strong IM Steffen Pedersen. Carlsen won the mini tournament by beating his own second Heine Nielsen in the final.

The Faaborg Midt Cup tournament was played in the beautiful castle Hvedholm, closeby F?ɬ•borg on the island Funen. After Seeland, Funen is the biggest island of Denmark and it's also called the Garden of Denmark. Hans Christan Andersen is one of the more famous Danish born on Funen.

The Hvedholm Castle was built in the 15th centrury. Till 1919 it was private property of different families but because of huge taxes that were put up that year by the government, the owners had to sell it. Now it functions as a hotel.

Friday and Saturday a double round-robin was played. Unfortunately there were the obligatory huge blunders here and there, as always with blindfold chess, but there were also some interesting games to watch.



Carlsen-Heine Nielsen (photo: Svend Novrup)

Berg-Pedersen (photo: Svend Novrup)

Today the finals for the 1st and 3rd place were played. Emanuel Berg beat Steffen Pedersen 1,5-0,5 and the final was won by Carlsen, who defeated Peter Heine Nielsen twice. In the first game Heine Nielsen had blundered a piece somewhere and also in the second one he was the weaker of the two when it came to calculation:



>> download al 16 games in PGN