Norway Rd9: Topalov wins event, Carlsen loses

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 shows the highlights of the last round

Certainly an anti-climatic end of the tournament, but we still have some interesting games:

Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime ½-½ Grischuk, Alexander
MVL perhaps entered a very slightly better rook endgame, but Grischuk defended well and the draw was agreed shortly before time control in a dead drawn situation.

Aronian, Levon 0-1 Nakamura, Hikaru
Nakamura won in fine style in what was certainly the best win of the round.

Nakamura worked hard in the last game for a victory, improving his final standing to third

Hammer, Jon Ludvig 1-0 Carlsen, Magnus
It is almost incomprehensible that the World Champion played this way today. Everything was bad about his play: his opening, his strategical comprehension, his tactics. He even got mated in the simplest of ways today:

An absolute disaster for the World Champion. Here he is realizing that he is about to get mated by Hammer's rooks. He lost 23 rating points in this tournament, lost four games, and this is easily the worst tournament ever played by Carlsen after obtaining his GM strength.

It's all over

An elated Hammer giving an interview to Yasser Seirawan

Topalov, Veselin ½-½ Anand, Viswanathan
The disappointment of the round. The players repeated the game between Ivanchuk-Carlsen from Wijk aan Zee. It was clear that Topalov just wanted to clinch with the draw while Anand was happy with a solid result with black in the final round. No fighting spirit here as the players split the point in less than half an hour.

A handshake less than half an hour after the start of the game

Caruana, Fabiano ½-½ Giri, Anish
Giri missed a great opportunity to clinch second (!) on tie break. The prize money is split between the players with the same amount of points, but the Grand Chess Tour points are not!

We will be bringing you a report on the closing ceremony, the prizes including the Grand Chess Tour standings, as well as what this means for the players and a recap of the event in the next couple of days.

Round nine games

Select from the dropdown menu to replay the games

Final standings

Tournament schedule

Links Official tournament site Grand Tour official site and commentary Blitz games in PGN Classical games in PGN The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 13 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.