What a strange and interesting blitz tournament, especially when viewed through Magnus Carlsen's performance! In round one, he had White against Fabiano Caruana, and he was beaten like a child. (Playing Bill Gates isn't going to help your chess when you're the world champion.) In round 2 he had White against Boris Gelfand, and Gelfand outplayed him too. Carlsen did manage to fight back and save the game by a thread, but it still wasn't an auspicious start. In round 3 Carlsen was completely lost against Levon Aronian out of the opening, and down two minutes on the clock besides, but grimly hung on and managed a draw.
At this point, he finally got things together, and was helped by playing Viswanathan Anand, who seems unable to play well against the champ. Anand was comprehensively beaten, resigning after just 21 moves with mate coming on the next turn. A win in the final game, against Hikaru Nakamura, finished his comeback, and he tied for first with Levon Aronian at +1, coming first on tiebreaks.
Behind Carlsen and Aronian, Nakamura, Caruana and Anand finished on 50%, with Nakamura getting the coveted third place and thus an extra White game in the real tournament. Gelfand finished in last with 1.5.
Here are the pairings for round 1 of the classical tournament, which starts tomorrow (Thursday):