Magnus Carlsen won his first two games in Karlsruhe over Vincent Keymer and Francisco Vallejo Pons, but three draws in succession against Viswanathan Anand, Fabiano Caruana and Arkadij Naiditsch have leaked points from the World Champion's stratospheric Elo rating, and he is now back where he was a week ago.
As Leonard Barden recently noted in The Guardian, Shamkir "became the most dominant performance by any top grandmaster since Fabiano Caruana won the Sinquefield Cup at St Louis 2014 with 8½/10."
Immediately following Shamkir, ChessBase India's IM Sagar Shah, paid some extra attention to Carlsen's last round effort, when beat Alexander Grischuk despite already having the tournament in the bag. (This game also impressed "Game of the Week" host IM Merijn van Delft.)
Have you ever faced a situation when you have won the tournament with a round to spare. The last round result is not going to change things. So now you have a decision to make. Either you can agree to a draw and not use your energy. Or you decide that it is important for me to fight hard in each and every game that I play and give your all.
This is what Magnus Carlsen did in the last round of the Shamkir Chess 2019. In spite of having won the tournament with a round to spare, Magnus fought hard and won his last game against Alexander Grischuk. It just goes to show what a fighter the world champion is. For him playing his best chess is the most important!
Here's a slightly less sober take:
Magnus entering 2019 like pic.twitter.com/7m4olyhaSV
— Dan (@AntonSquaredMe) April 10, 2019
Carlsen vs Grischuk got Carlsen's rating back above 2860
Carlsen will need further blowout performances like he showed in Shamkir, if he hopes to reach and exceed his career peak of 2882, set in May 2014.
