Tag Archives: FIDE World Rapid & Blitz Championships Dubai 2014

Carlsen Is The New World Blitz Chess Champion!

General,

_ABF3400-200-200Magnus Carlsen is the new World Blitz Chess Champion. On the second day of the tournament in Dubai he scored 8 points out 10 games, making a total of 17 out of 21!

Carlsen went into the second day with half a point lead, but things were not so easy, especially since Ian Nepomniachtchi was on a roll today starting with six wins in a row(!) and Carlsen only drawing against such cracks as Anand, Aronian, Morozevich and Grischuk. This even meant that after the 16th round Nepo had taken over the lead by half a point.

In round 17 Nepo and Carlsen beat Yudin and Dreev respectively keeping Nepo in the lead. Also in round 18 the standings did not change when both matadors drew their games against Mamedov and Morozevich. But after round 19 Carlsen had leveled the field again by beating Mamedov when Nepo only drew against Korobov. All was to be decided in the last two rounds!

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Carlsen Leads Halfway World Blitz Chess Championship In Dubai

General, ,

_ABF3430-200-200Hi all,

Today I had the pleasure of following closely the games that were played on the first day of the World Blitz Chess Championship in Dubai.

After the first day it is Magnus Carlsen who leads the field with a whopping 9 out of 11!
I noticed that also in Blitz he has a great love and feel for the endgame and that is where today he scored a lot of his points.

There was one classical example that stood out, Carlsen – Le from the 7th round.
It was classical in the sense that White (on the light squares) had the proverbial “good” bishop versus the notorious “bad bishop” for Black.
All white’s pawns were on dark squares and all of Black’s on light squares.
But that in itself was not enough to win.
In order to obtain real winning chances, Carlsen initiated a nice sequence of breaks on the kingside of which the ultimate goal was to gain space and cramp Black’s position.
Then in the end some tiresome manoeuvring did the trick.

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