Hi 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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