Norway Chess: Carlsen, Kramnik and Giri win

by André Schulz
4/20/2016 – The Norway Chess tournament in Stavanger saw a lively first round and three players winning with the white pieces: Anish Giri used his tactical chances to win against Pavel Eljanov and Magnus Carlsen steamrolled Pentala Harikrishna. Vladimir Kramnik won against Nils Grandelius by showing patience and good technique. The other two games ended in a draw.

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At the Candidates Tournament in Moscow Anish Giri often failed to make use of his chances and as a result had to suffer countless jokes about his many draws. But in the first round of the Norway Chess tournament he showed that he still knows how to win. In an Italian game he exploited a tactical oversight by his opponent.

 

At the start of a tournament and against weaker opponents Magnus Carlsen sometimes has problems to show his real strength. However, during the opening blitz the World Champion already demonstrated how keen he is to play. And Pentala Harikrishna is everything but a "weaker" opponent but close to replace Vishy Anand as India's number one. However, against Carlsen things did not go too well for the Indian. He was virtually steamrolled.

 

Vladimir Kramnik's game was less spectacular. Playing with White against Nils Grandelius, Kramnik, who recently took a liking to openings with an early Bf4, always had the initiative and was better, but needed patience and good technique to win. But the constant pressure was finally too much for the Swedish grandmaster who faltered a few moves before the time-control.

 

Round 1 - Results

Br. Tit Name ELO Ergebnis Titel Name ELO
1 GM Vladimir Kramnik 2801 1 - 0 GM Nils Grandelius 2637
2 GM Magnus Carlsen 2844 1 - 0 GM Pentala Harikrishna 2753
3 GM Maxime Vachier Lagrave 2785 ½ - ½ GM Li Chao 2755
4 GM Anish Giri 2793 1 - 0 GM Pavel Eljanov 2760
5 GM Levon Aronian 2786 ½ - ½ GM Veselin Topalov 2780

Standings after round 1

Photos: Altibox Norway Chess/Joachim Steinbru

Tournament page...

 


André Schulz started working for ChessBase in 1991 and is an editor of ChessBase News.

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