Whatever we might want to say that's positive about the just-completed World Chess Championship, that it showed two players giving their all in every game, pushing until there was nothing left to do isn't among them. Viswanathan Anand and Boris Gelfand are great players, but they aren't infallible, and on those occasions when they did press the fight there were mistakes aplenty. Pressing brings about dividends!
One player who knows this all too well is world #1 Magnus Carlsen. Like any top player, he can do everything well in chess, but one of the things that sets him apart is his technical skill. He has defeated even the very best players in the world from "drawn" positions, and on a regular basis.
So to help remind you what a full-bodied technical struggle and masterpice looks like, check out this week's ChessVideos show. Magnus Carlsen chooses a rather quiet line against Pavel Eljanov's Gruenfeld and manages to come out of the opening with a very small edge. Material is fairly limited (two rooks, a bishop, knight and five pawns apiece), and had the game finished in a quick draw no one would have thought anything of it, except perhaps to complain about White's opening choice. But for Carlsen, that endgame wasn't the end of a sketch; rather, it was the start of a full-fledged work of art. He accumulated small advantages, and because he didn't hurry to cash them in he was able to keep accumulating them. Little by little he made progress, sometimes very slowly and sometimes more quickly as Eljanov would make unfortunate concessions. Throughout the game, Carlsen maintained a boa constrictor like grip, and one of the world's best players seemed totally outclassed.
There's much more detail in the video, of course: I carefully survey the variation's theory, try to analyze the game as a whole and attempt to show on a conceptual level why Carlsen's endgame play was so successful. As always, the video is free (one-time free registration is required) and will be available on-demand for the next month or so.