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Magnus Carlsen`s Blog

Moscow, November 6th 2009, Tal Memorial Round 2

Todays opponent Alexander Morozevich has been a fairly stable top10 player for more than 10 years. He is a highly creative and aggressive player with a fantastic score against players outside the top 30, but he often has some problems against the very best. Last year he did very well, also leading this Tal Memorial for 6 rounds, and he was ranked 2nd in the world during 2nd half 2008. I had the white pieces and the opening moves were the same as against Kramnik yesterday, but I deviated fairly early and got a comfortable position. Black spent a lot of time and did not play as aggressively as he usually does, maybe partly because I have a good score from our previous encounters. He had to settle for a slightly difficult endgame and I was quite optimistic about my prospects. However, he was able to organise his defences and after trying various plans in vain, I had to settle for a draw yielding half a point to each after 4 hours play. Amazingly all the games ended in draws today, we’re all at 1 point after 2 rounds. In top level chess there is a fairly wide margin for a draw in the sense that you need a significant advantage to be able to win as most of the players are excellent defenders. Hence typically 60-70 % of top level games result in a draw. Magnus Carlsen

2010-03-09 10:08:59