Ivanchuk And Carlsen Joint Winners At Amber

A thrilling last round at Amber ended with Vassily Ivanchuk and Magnus Carlsen emerging as deserved joint winners of Amber 2010.

Disaster struck early on for Carlsen his blindfold match with Grischuk.  Mistakenly believing his opponent's queen was on d2 rather than e3, Carlsen blundered his own queen away as a result.

This little mishap for the young Norwegian ensured that Grischuk won the blindfold half of the event by a clear 1.5 points.

Ivanchuk drew an exciting blindfold game with Gelfand to catch Carlsen with just their rapid games remaining.  Kramnik also moved within striking distance by beating Karjakin in their blindfold encounter.

However, Kramnik's chances were shortlived as Karjakin gained sweet revenge against Kramnik's Pirc defence in their rapid game.

Meanwhile, Ivanchuk laid down the gauntlet in his final game of the event by destroying Gelfand's Petroff defence in spectacular fashion.  That left Carlsen needing a win to share victory in the overall standings, and after some middlegame magic that's exactly what he did.

So we bid farewell to the hugely entertaining Amber tournament for another year.  Hearty congratulations to Vassily Ivanchuk and Magnus Carlsen on being joint winners.

There are no tie-breaks at Amber, but since Ivanchuk beat Carlsen 2-0 way back in the opening round you could argue that makes him the moral winner.  Also, kudos to Ivanchuk for not losing a single game throughout the entire competition!

The results in the final round:

The final standings at Amber 2010:

Some games from the final round are below.  All games are available at the official website.