King's Tournament, Round 6: Carlsen Swindles Ponomariov
After a lackluster start to the tournament, world #1 (by rating) Magnus Carlsen has won three games in a row and leads the King's Tournament by a full point over Teimour Radjabov and Boris Gelfand. His score of 4.5/6 gives him a TPR of 2921 and an actual rating (according to the Live Top List) of 2821; if he maintains it, he will be officially the second highest-rated player of all time.
His win in the latest round wasn't so smooth, however. As Black in a King's Indian against Ruslan Ponomariov, he seemed to be in big trouble, down a pawn with no obvious compensation. (If anything, Ponomariov had the pawn and the compensation too.) But Carlsen's 21...Rxd2!?(?), which looks like it was at least half-bluffing, worked perfectly when Ponomariov tried to bail out with the unprincipled 23.Rf2. After that Black was better and not even down any material. Carlsen briefly gave Ponomariov a chance to fight with an error on move 28, but White missed his chance and went down without too much of a fight.
The other games were drawn: Wang Yue - Gelfand was everything you'd expect from those two, i.e. not much, while Radjabov - Nisipeanu was a crazy game that should have been continued. I suppose the players were both scared and in time pressure, so it was understandable, but the board was full of play.
You can see for yourself here, where you can replay the games with my annotations.
Standings:
1. Carlsen 4.5 (out of 6)
2-3. Radjabov, Gelfand 3.5
4. Nisipeanu 2.5
5-6. Wang Yue, Ponomariov 2
Round 7 Pairings:
Ponomariov - Wang Yue
Carlsen - Radjabov
Nisipeanu - Gelfand
Reader Comments (10)
I thnk you missed the most impressive part of Carlsen's performance - the last two of three wins came with the Black pieces.
Maybe the win over Nisipeanu was impressive from a "win with Black" point of view, but not the one against Ponomariov. That was basically Ponomariov getting bluffed or just chickening out in a winning or nearly winning position.
I just mean that winning two in a row with Black at that level is impressive regardless. The fact is that Carlsen DID bully and/or bluff Ponomariov. How many players can do that?
I'm not sure, but Carlsen may be trying to do the same to Radjabov right now.
@icepick: It just makes Kasparov's 5(!) Black wins at Linares 1999 that more impressive. It is really hard to win with Black at this level, but not if you're Kasparov: +5 =2 -0 with Black at Linares 1999.
Jeffrey, I remember that tournament. I was in awe at the time, and still am all these years later. And before Linares he had reeled off 8 straight wins at the Hoogovens tournament that year. I'm too young to remember Fischer's heydey, but feel lucky to have watched Kasparov all those years. Karpov too.
And I forgot, Kasparov's epic crush of Topalov was in that run of eight straight at Hoogovens.
And make it four in a row!
The issue wasn't how many players could bluff or intimidate Ponomariov (not many, I'm sure), but whether winning the two games with Black was somehow the most impressive aspect of his (then-)three game streak. My point was only that there was nothing especially impressive about it from the color-perspective, as he got a simply lousy position with Black and won by being resourceful - something one can do with either color. Kasparov's five wins back in Linares were far more impressive in that respect - not only because of the quantity, but because he was winning the theoretical duels with Black. It's one thing to win with Black when you're the better player, and another thing altogether to come out of the opening with a better position
(Btw, Kasparov's winning streak at WaZ in 1999 was 7 games, not 8. He won 8 games in total, but the last win wasn't part of the streak.)
Hmm, I thought it was seven games, but my database said eight games, so I assumed I had misremembered. [Correction: My database DID say seven games. I misread Kasparov's round nine loss to Sokolov as a win.]
As for the Carlsen's wins with Black: we just aren't going to agree there. True the scramble could have come from a bad position with either color, but he got into that bad position because he had been trying for something to begin with. Not that long ago pretty much none of the top players were playing the KID - it was an ambitious choice. Now if this had happened out of a Petroff* I might agree with you!
* Of course even the Petroff has seen more violence lately. Personally I love the current era.
Seems more like he was ill-prepared, probably missed something in his calculations with ...b5, and was bailed out by an out-of-form Ponomariov. I still don't see how this makes winning with Black anything more than a coincidence. If you want me to give him credit for trying with Black, rather than playing something like Lasker's Defense, I'm willing to do that. But that second Black win isn't anything special in terms of overall quality or some deep new concept. Just a good scrap.