Carlsen Takes The Lead At Amber
Magnus Carlsen had an excellent day in the penultimate round at Amber. He defeated former FIDE world champion Ruslan Ponomariov 2-0 to take the lead from Vassily Ivanchuk.
Although this was a great result for Carlsen, it's hard to understand how Ponomariov contrived to lose the rapid game in a totally drawn ending. Definitely not Ponomariov's finest hour.
Not-so-super-Ponomariov meets his match against Carlsen (picture from the official site)
Vassily Ivanchuk and Vladimir Kramnik faced off against one another in two incredibly hard fought games but neither could land a knockout punch. Their blindfold clash lasted an astonishing 112 moves! That's enough to give anyone a headache...
Alexander Grischuk lost his first blindfold game of the competition to slip out of contention in the overall standings, although he still leads the blindfold event. He failed to remember the correct position and his flag fell as he desperately tried to make a legal move. Lev Aronian was the happy beneficiary of Grischuk's misfortune.
Finally, spare a moment to raise your glasses for Jan Smeets who won his bottom-of-the-table clash with Dominguez to leave the unfortunate Cuban in last place.
The results in round 10:
| Blind | Aronian-Grischuk | 1-0 |
| Smeets-Dominguez | ½-½ | |
| Carlsen-Ponomariov | 1-0 | |
| Blind | Ivanchuk-Kramnik | ½-½ |
| Svidler-Gelfand | ½-½ | |
| Karjakin-Gashimov | ½-½ | |
| Rapid | Grischuk-Aronian | ½-½ |
| Dominguez-Smeets | 0-1 | |
| Ponomariov-Carlsen | 0-1 | |
| Rapid | Kramnik-Ivanchuk | ½-½ |
| Gelfand-Svidler | 0-1 | |
| Gashimov-Karjakin | ½-½ |
The standings with one round to go:
| Blind | Rapid | Total | ||
| Carlsen, Magnus | NOR | 6.5 | 7.0 | 13.5 |
| Ivanchuk, Vassily | UKR | 6.0 | 7.0 | 13.0 |
| Kramnik, Vladimir | RUS | 5.5 | 6.5 | 12.0 |
| Grischuk, Alexander | RUS | 7.0 | 4.5 | 11.5 |
| Gelfand, Boris | ISR | 5.5 | 5.5 | 11.0 |
| Karjakin, Sergey | UKR | 5.5 | 5.5 | 11.0 |
| Gashimov, Vugar | AZE | 5.0 | 5.5 | 10.5 |
| Svidler, Peter | RUS | 5.0 | 5.5 | 10.5 |
| Aronian, Levon | ARM | 4.0 | 5.5 | 9.5 |
| Ponomariov, Ruslan | UKR | 4.0 | 3.5 | 7.5 |
| Smeets, Jan | NED | 3.5 | 2.0 | 5.5 |
| Dominguez Perez, Leinier | CUB | 2.5 | 2.0 | 4.5 |
The final round takes place tomorrow, 25th March and starts two hours eariler than previous rounds, at 12:30 local time. By chance, the pairings neatly split the field into top and bottom halves:
| Grischuk | Carlsen |
| Gelfand | Ivanchuk |
| Kramnik | Karjakin |
| Gashimov | Svidler |
| Dominguez | Aronian |
| Ponomariov | Smeets |
The players listed first have white in the blindfold game. Some game from today are below. All games are available at the official site.
