11/29/2009 – This low-key blitz event took part on Saturday, November 28th in Oslo, Norway. Ten players were invited and divided into two groups, insuring that the two designated finalists, Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura, would meet in the final. We have with difficulty managed to get some of the games in PGN. We also have a special visual treat for you: front-seat videos of the final.
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Oslo Blitz – Battle of Titans
The quarter-finals started with the two favourites sailing through easily.
Magnus Carlsen won all of his games, except for a draw against GM Monika Socko.
Hikaru Nakamura, the US American blitz specialist, won all of his games period.
In the semifinals Nakamura played Danish GM Peter Heine Nielsen , who is a
second of World Champion Vishy Anand (and a former trainer of Magnus Carlsen).
Nakamura demolished him 3-0. The same applies to Magnus Carlsen, who won the
first three of four semifinal games against Swedish GM Emanuel Berg (the fourth
in each case did not need to be played). Here's a cute little miniature from
the semifinal you might enjoy:
Nielsen,Peter Heine - Nakamura,Hikaru [D20]
BNBank Blitz semifinal Oslo (3), 28.11.2009 1.d4 d5 2.c4 dxc4 3.e4 Nf6 4.e5 Nd5 5.Bxc4 Nb6 6.Bd3 Nc6 7.Ne2 Bg4 8.Be3
e6 9.Nbc3 Be7 10.Be4 Bf5 11.Bf3 Nb4 12.0-0 N4d5 13.Ng3 Bg6 14.Nxd5 Nxd5 15.Qb3
Rb8 16.Qa4+ c6 17.Qxa7 Bd3 18.Rfd1?? (18.Rfc1 would have left the position
playable) 18...Ba6
The queen is trapped (...Ra8) and can only be rescued by sacrificing a bishop:
19.Bg5 Bxg5 20.Qc5. 0-1.
The final began well for Magnus Carlsen, who won the first game with the black
pieces, and then had a completely winning position in the second:
"So far so good," said Magnus' training in Moscow. White can play
g3 and attack the black rook with Nc6. Fritz gives the position +10.20. However
to the horror of Garry Kasparov, who was receiving the moves via Skype, his
Norwegian protegé started to lose the thread. 45.Qe8+ Kh7 46.Qxd8
Qxd8 47.Nc6 Qb6 48.d8Q Nxd1 49.Qxb6 axb6. Suddenly Magnus has just
a one-pawn advantage (Fritz says +1.06 with a frown), and the demoralised young
GM goes on lose the game. 50.Kg1 Nc3 51.Nd4 Kg6 52.Kf2 Kf6 53.Ke3 Ke5
54.Kd3 Nd5 55.Ne2 Kd6 56.Kd4 Nc7 57.Nc3 Ne6+ 58.Ke4 g6 59.Nb5+ Kc5 60.Ke5 Kxb5
61.Kxe6 Ka4 62.Kf6 Kxa3 63.Kxg6 b5 64.f4 b4 65.f5 b3 66.f6 b2 67.f7 b1Q+ 68.Kxh6
Qf5 69.Kg7 Qg5+ 70.Kh7 Qf6 71.Kg8 Qg6+ 72.Kf8 Kb4 73.h4 Kc5 74.h5 Qxh5 75.g4
Qxg4 76.Ke7 Qg7 0-1. You can watch this all unfold in full technicolor
in the YouTube videos below.
The winner of the Oslo Blitz tournament: Hikaru Nakamura, USA
In the end Hikaru Nakamura won the Oslo Blitz final 2½-1½, with
the final draw being conceeded in a totally won position. [Addendum:
the official site gives the result of the final as 3:1 for Nakamura, indicating
that the result of the final game would be incorrect. It should not be ½-½
but 0-1 for the American.]
We have to recognize: Hikaru is one of the all-time great blitz players, something
he has proved on the Playchess server, where he reached top rankings at 3542
in blitz. And now has beaten the inofficial number one player in the world,
who is just back from Moscow, where he won one of the strongest blitz tournaments
in history, three points ahead of World Champion Vishy Anand, who was himself
three points ahead of the rest of the world elite field.
Videos posted on YouTube by Todd Freitag
Below are the videos of the four games of the Oslo Blitz Finals. They were
captured by Todd Freitag of Chicago off the live video feed of the official
web site. The videos are a littly choppy at times – either the webcam
was not working properly, or the organisers had insufficient bandwidth.
As a special service you can watch the four videos together with replayable
games on our JavaScript board. Try it out: start the video and click on the
notation or the replay buttons to follow the moves on the graphic chessboard.
Note that you can pause the video at any stage by pressing the Space bar on
your computer keyboard. Pressing it again will restart the video.
To read, replay and analyse the PGN games we adivse you to download the
free PGN
reader ChessBase Light. This program also gives you immediate access
to the chess server Playchess.com.
2nd Move Anti-Sicilian Powerbase 2025 is a database and contains a total of 12090 games from Mega 2025 or the Correspondence Database 2024, of which 874 are annotated.
Ruy Lopez Powerbase 2025 is a database and contains a total of 12092 games from Mega 2025 and the Correspondence Database 2024, of which 1276 are annotated.
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