Norway 04: 0.5/4 – Anand the executioner

The third edition of the Norway Chess tournament runs from June 15th to June 26th, and will mostly be played in Stavanger, Norway. As in previous years, the drawing of lots was determined by the blitz tournament taking place the day before the official start. Not only one of the strongest tournaments in the World, Norway 2015 is also part of the 2015 Grand Chess Tour, which includes the Sinquefield Cup and the London Chess Classic later this year.

Daniel King on Anand-Carlsen

Grischuk, Alexander 1-0 Hammer, Jon Ludvig
A mysterious game. White's cheeky move Nh3!? was met with the interesting g5!?... and Grischuk undeveloped his knight immediately! The Russian player felt that the Norwegian was over-aggressive with h5, and he liked his position after that. The structure certainly favored White. Hammer was unable to defend against the strong pressure against all of his pawns, and despite his resourceful tricks he ended falling in a long endgame.

A nice win for the Russian player, who returns to 50%

Topalov, Veselin 1-0 Aronian, Levon
A tough game for the Armenian. He purposefully chose a variation of the Ragozin that was very solid, but extremely passive. Topalov enjoyed putting pressure on Black's position throughout the entire game, and Aronian was never fully out of danger. However, just when things were looking somewhat manageable, Aronian blundered:

Topalov becomes the sole leader with a fabulous (and somewhat lucky) 3.5/4

Caruana, Fabiano ½-½ Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime
Caruana repeated the variation that they played in Wijk aan Zee earlier this year. MVL was the first to deviate with a quick b5, but it was not terribly successful. Caruan probably had a an edge with a kingside initiative. When the Frenchman took a pawn on f4, Caruana had two ways of taking back. One led to a strong initiative while the other allowed a nice combination that equalized the game. Caruana underestimated this continuation, MVL took full advantage of it and forced an opposite colored situation that drew the game, despite being down a pawn.

Giri, Anish ½-½ Nakamura, Hikaru
Giri repeated an opening preparation that Sam Shankland used against his compatriot, Sam Sevian, in Tata Steel earlier this year. Perhaps he obtained a small advantage from the opening, but with his strange moves it seemed that he lost most of it - his bishops ended up in rather awkward squares. Nakamura tried to force the issue and equalize via tactics, but he was not 100% precise and Giri was allowed a very slight edge with a passed pawn in an opposite colored bishop position.

At the end of the day Nakamura defended resourcefully and Giri was not even close to creating real problems to Black.

Anand, Viswanathan 1-0 Carlsen, Magnus
A fantastic game from Anand, and another subpar performance from the World Champion:

The opening transposed into known paths, but the route there was strange

The Norwegian Curse seems to be in full force here against Carlsen. The Norwegian has had bad performances in all of his tournaments in Norway in the past. Neither of his 2013 or 2014 performances in this tournament was impressive, and his Tromso result was mediocre at best. This disaster, however, is simply unprecedented. It seems hard to believe that Carlsen can bounce back from this and win the tournament (even winning the next five games in a row might be insufficient), but there is the entire Grand Chess Tour to think about, and Carlsen needs to win games quickly if he wants to obtain some Grand Chess Tour points.

Grischuk checking out how busted Carlsen is

After the game the World Champion mentioned that he wanted to play tomorrow instead of having a rest day, but I suspect that team Carlsen will be happy about the break, something must change before this spirals even further out of control!

Things are already beyond repair in this endgame

VG, one of Norway's main newspapers. The title translates
along the lines of "Carlsen loses again. Badly. It is embarassing."

The Norwegian press is, as Yasser Seirawan puts it, "in a tizzy". Carlsen has not had such a bad start in a tournament in 10 years, since he was a teenager back in Gausdall Classic 2005.

Anand gave a nice interview after the game for the grandchesstour.com broadcast. He mentioned how this must be a consequence of the mental destabilization caused by the freak occurence in the first round, in which Carlsen lost on time.

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