Carlsen beats Jakovenko, breaks 2800 barrier
9 October 2009, 8.51 CET | Last modified: 17:12 | By Peter Doggers | Filed under: Reports | Tags:
Already sure of a sole victory, Magnus Carlsen added even more brilliancy to his Pearl Spring victory by defeating Dmitry Jakovenko in the last round. In doing so, at only 18 years old the Norwegian set a performance rating over 3000 and broke the 2800 barrier (assuming he won’t play more rated games for the 1 November FIDE rating list).
The 2nd Pearl Spring tournament takes place September 27 – October 9 in Nanjing, China. It’s a 6-player, double round-robin with Topalov (2813), Carlsen (2772), Leko (2762), Radjabov (2757), Jakovenko (2742) and Wang Yue (2736) playing for a € 250,000 prize fund. The rate of play is 40 moves in 90 minutes plus 1 hour.
Round 10
We have trouble finding the words to rightfully describe what Magnus Carlsen has done in China. By winning the Pearl Spring Grand Slam tournament with a devastating 8 out 10 and an unbelievable 3002 performance rating, dropping just four half points with the black pieces in ten games against the world’s best, he took home € 80,000 and a total of 28.8 rating points and broke the magical 2800 barrier.
It’s unclear whether Garry Kasparov, who started coaching Carlsen this year, had already reached this level of play at at 18 years, ten months and one and a half week. We’re talking early February 1982, a time when Kasparov had won the Soviet Championship twice shared. In the same year he won his first super-tournament himself, in Bugojno, finishing with 9.5/13 (!) ahead of Hübner, Polugaevsky, Ljubojevic, Spassky, Petrosian, Andersson, Larsen, Ivanovic, Timman, Kavalek, Najdorf, Gligoric and Ivkov.
In the light of the many draws that were played in Nanjing, it’s interesting to give a quote from The Test of Time, in which Kasparov writes:
“Both [the first two Bugojno] tournaments produced a hard struggle, and therefore uncomprimising play was also expected of the participants in the 1982 event. And it has to be expected that these expectations were not betrayed – in each round there were interesting games, and it was only at the finish, when competitive considerations began to take the upper hand, that some short draws occured.”
The Pearl Spring tournament was just one tournament, and a relatively short event, so it still remains to be see how Carlsen will develop from here, and how it will go against the top players who weren’t in Nanjing. The good news is that he will meet about all of the others in the upcoming Tal Memorial: Anand, Aronian, Kramnik, Ivanchuk, Gelfand, Morozevich, Ponomariov and Svidler. In less then a month the fairy tale continues…
Carlsen’s last victory, today against Jakovenko, was a continuation of Kasparov and Karpov’s theoretical discussion in the Queen’s Gambit Declined, Exchange Variation. And just like in Valencia, Black got a solid but passive position out of the opening. It was instructive to see that White’s early e4-e5 was good because of Black’s lack in development and clumsy knights, and so both c5 and f6 pawn breaks were impossible to realize quickly. As soon as White’s pawns started rolling the position got impossible to defend (although we’re not sure whether Carlsen’s 26th move was the most accurate).
The Petroff in Leko-Wang Yue was as dull as only a Petroff can be but Topalov and Radjabov fought out a game of no less than 95 moves in this last round. In a theoretically important line of the 9.Ne1 King’s Indian there was a lot of manoeuvering (at some point 25 moves were played without a capture or a pawn being pushed!), and although Topalov seemed slightly better all the time, Radjabov skillfully held everything together.
Carlsen took those 28 rating points from all the players; none of the others managed to win points in Nanjing. In the end Radjabov, Jakovenko and Leko all ended on minus two and so nobody played that terrible, but only Topalov and Wang Yue could more or less keep their regular level. Some of Leko and Wang Yue’s games really looked uninspired and we think Radjabov needs to work on his White repertoire, but for the rest, well, this tournament will only be remembered for one player!
Games round 10
Game viewer by ChessTempo
2nd Pearl Spring (Nanjing) 2009 | Round 10 Standings
2nd Pearl Spring (Nanjing) 2009 | Schedule & results
Radjabov and Topalov analyzing after their 95 moves long game
Still the world's number one, but with a smaller margin: Veselin Topalov
A fantastic first prize of € 80,000: Magnus Carlsen
Links
- Pearl Spring website
- Gujuan Tzu’s blog
- Ye Rongguang’s photo blog
- Pearl Spring games in PGN
- Women GP website
- Women GP games in PGN
 ShareThis
|  Print
|
I have no words. Clap, clap, clap!
8/10. Wow, just wow. This must be one if the great tournament victories of all time.
Gratz Carlsen!
Now Kasparov has to write another chess book:
“My great successor”
Not yet, Marian, but probably in the near future, yes.
He is the Chess God!
Only 7.8 points off Topalov’s rating…one more tournament like this and there is no tomorrow!
As a 18 years old boy, I think he is better than Kasparov …
Norway is great! It gave us Magnus and … Nobel Peace Prize for Barack Obama
Very nice finish of Carlsen this tournament.
(why do I sometimes get a database error , when visiting Chessvibes?)
Screw Lady Gaga,
My new idol for sure Magnus Carlsen.
Actually i followed him since his victory on corus C! group when he was 13.
Bravo Carlsen. You will now rule the chess-scene. Although he will be the one who make tournementsstandings predictable in future till its that far he will play matches for world-championship……………………….. Cant wait.
Congrats Carlsen!!!!
Is it just me or did this look easy for Carlsen????? If you win a tournament like this with ease there is no limit………. A new era is on our door step!!!!!!
THE BIRTH OF A LEGEND!!!!
The Nobel Prize is swedish.
Not easy at all, incredible tension and hard work!
Amazing!
Incredible………..
Amazing performance – 3002! 8 out of 10! Simply smashing!!!
8/10 in a grand slam!!! Its awesome performance… I have got no words for him.
Carslparov will rule the world …
Unforgettable performance!
The 16th Classical Chess World Champion has arrived!
I can’t wait to witness the Carlsen-Aronian rivalry saga in years to come.
He is Great and i think he is gona break the record of Kasparov of Being the World Chess Champion before 22.
Amazing performance by Carlsen but apart from that the tournament was a bit boring. There were 21 draws out of 30 games quite a few uninteresting ones…
Now don’t get so carried away…
It was an epic performance by Carlsen (probably with the highest rating performance of all time), but this won’t happen every tournament, he was in great form now. I hope he will get the chance to play for the world title soon. And i wish above all to see all the top-rated players fighting for the challenger’s spot.
Bravo Magnus! Y gracias Chessdom
) por los fantasticos reportajes!
Ups! And THANK YOU! “Chessvibes”
)
Dont Forget Now Anand Is The World Champion . Lets Wait To See The Tal Memorial
and on top of everything magnus seems to be about one of the nicest guys out there. congrats magnus!!
Thank you for the analysis! I had a look at it too, and here are some other ideas:
15…f6 seems very strong. Tricks with Qxh7 followed by Ng5 only lead to a draw, 16.g3 gives black the option of Qh3, and after 16.exf6 Qxf6 white has nothing either. White maintains a small edge, but hardly worth mentioning (certainly compared to the game).
I think 19…f5 was the last chance for black, after that everything seems bad. 20…Ne6 doesn’t work, white has 21.Ne3 Qe4 22.Nc2 Qf5 and now 23.Rf2! with the idea of 24.Ne3 Qe4 25.f5! and with a rook on f2, black can’t play Qxd4 anymore. It’s rather complicated, but white seems to get a comfortable advantage.
Pam,
) por los fantasticos reportajes!” please.
English translation of
” Bravo Magnus! Y gracias Chessdom
Interestingly, Topalov’s performance was not at all bad considering his TPR is still one rating point higher than Anand’s actual rating!
Wow wow, looking forward to the Great Test: the Tal Memorial!!
How long before he breaks the 2900 barrier ?
My guess is less than 2 years.
Congrats Carlsen
and many thanks to Chessvibes for their always prompt and excellent coverage.
… breaking 2800 is touted like an achievement akin to Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barreer.. but in fact it is simply a mathematical result of the ELO inflation which has made the average rating of players rise like baking powder over the last coupla years. The damnable K-factor – in fact the ELO-ratings system is wildy distorted, inaccurate, and shd be seen just as a shaky indication of the relative strength of a player…vide fe the overrating of Caruana who got triturated in the extremely tough Club Cup competition so far…
“Pam,
) por los fantasticos reportajes!” please.”
English translation of
” Bravo Magnus! Y gracias Chessdom
“Horay, Magnus! And thanks Chessvibes for the fantastic reports!”
Muy buena traducción. Y viva Magnus, y viva el ajedrez de alto calibre y la muchachada esquizoide que se enzarza en peliagudas luchas de poder bajo la órbita de un tablero asesino. Que la redada de las piezas de Magnus a los reyes adversarios no se detenga jamás.
Great performance! But some euphories seem completely out of porportion!
Anyway, I tryed to read the article and the comments, but at half of these I had to stop. It was too much!
“Nice” incredible sentences:
“it has to be expected that these expectations were not betrayed” (Kasparov)
Yes, Garry, we romantics do hope expectations to incredibly correspond to the expected!
“The Petroff in Leko-Wang Yue was as dull as only a Petroff can be” (Doggers)
We are almost obliged to defend this defence! Agains this kind of poetic-demagogic-irrealistic attacks! Poor Petroff!
“Norway is great! It gave us Magnus and … Nobel Peace Prize for Barack Obama” (last comment I could bear)
Well, all in all, a great tournament and some good laughs made my day!
A bit fat CONGRATULATIONS to you, Magnus!!! Keep it going. ChessVibes, thanks for posting info very fastly during the entire tournament.
Amazing performance and quoting “Test of time (still one of my fav books). Briljant!!
Congratulations and thank you for your great performance, Mr. Carlsen!!! It was a fantastic feat which I have not seen for quite a while!!! I know it sounds funny, but I feel proud to be a lover of this game today (even though I never do justice to this wonderful game!)
And thank you ChessVibes for your quick and wonderful coverage!!! I will continue to come back here!
Standing ovation for GM Carlsen! Hard work paid off.
We have witnessed an amazing performance.
Thanks to Chessvibes. We really appreciate the reporting, analysis and photos. First rate.
+6 Undefeated! WOW!
On to the Tal Memorial!
“The Petroff in Leko-Wang Yue was as dull as only a Petroff can be”
Well said Doggers, the truth must be spoken.
Chessvibes is great. Can anyone direct me to a chess website that offers post game and post match interviews? Do the players get up and leave immediately, or does someone record some comments and transcribe them for us to read??
I read motorsport dot com daily which displays many quotes and press conferences of drivers whereever and whenever avaiable.
Thanks again Chessvibes.
Cheers.
Thanks for a formidable coverage, Chessvibes. Our expectations for the Tal Memorial are quite lofty now.
>> Actually i followed him since his victory on corus C! group when he was 13
I remember reading comments by Magnus where he wasn’t so sure how things would go mentioning that other young players like Karjakin & Radjabov were already way ahead of him. Look where he is now!
>> How long before he breaks the 2900 barrier ? My guess is less than 2 years.
If the rest stays below or around 2800 that’s practically impossible. He would literally have to win every single game.
>> it is simply a mathematical result of the ELO inflation
Yes, but inflation works for everyone and he is now second on the list which does mean something no matter what the numbers are.
@test
“inflation works for everyone”
yes, Kasparov at his best would have now 2900, and Fisher 3200
Prediction: The next World Championship (after the coming cycle is finished) will be Carlsen vs. Aronian!
I hope so… That would be great match to watch… Preferable: best of 24 classical games!
Excellent coverage by Chessvibes! Commentary on time every day, instructive analyses of the games, accurate tournament data, nice photos… very professional work. Thanks, Peter! Looking forward to follow the Tal Memorial on Chessvibes as well!
Just 2 extremely good things are going around now.
Magnus Carlsen wich will rule the chess scene for years for sure
Chessvibes.com wich will rule the chess journalism for years for sure
Both Thank U!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ChessVibes thanks a lot for all your great hard work on the updates for this Pearl Spring Tournament. Magnus is an amazing kid chess genius and none of us could of appreciated his talents like we do without your contributions on this web site. The official site doesn’t even compare.
I look forward to seeing the Tal memoial and Magnus playing against Anand and Kramnik. I’ll be back on this site daily for updates on that one! Personally I’d be pretty scared of playing Magnus if I were those guys.
chessvibes is so incredibly cooool
like whatever you know but they just fucking rule
like who needs live coverage anyway you know?
you nerd
Chessvibes is the best
i want a round robin tournament with topalov,kramnik,vishy anand and carlsen..m sure it will be a smashing one !!!
Ritch,
Thanks for the English translation.
Chessvibes is indeed the very best. Coverage on the same day, excellent! Tal Memorial will hopefully be a real memorial when either Magnus or Kramnik crush the competition!
@eso es: Regarding Caruana, some clarifications:
On board 3, the European Club Cup isn’t “an extremely strong event”: Caruana scored 50% against an average rating of 2436 – he may simply be out of form, or he had to take excessive risks in some games for the sake of the team.
Looking through his recent results (you can always find them on the FIDE rating list): He had strong performances (Olympiad, Corus B, Russian Team Championship), a weak one (European individual championship – losing almost all the rating points gained at Corus B), with the Biel supertournament “somewhere in between” (4/10 against an average of 2725, including Ivanchuk underrated at 2703 – loss of two rating points).
What all this has to do with Carlsen’s case is yet another story … .
That should be an 8.8 point rating difference between Topalov and Carlsen. Still very close!
Fantastic play by Carlsen!
Also great that the gameviewer works on the iPhone!
Thanks for the tournament report. Could you please refrain from speculating about the extent of opening preparation in the Carlsen-Kasparov collaboration when Carlsen plays again? It’s getting a bit annoying now in the game annotations. Magnus is not a puppet.
Congratulations to GM Magnus Carlsen for (t)his exciting chess event in China – so far from us here in little Europe, but due to ChessVibes so very close to us to follow by Internet! There are certainly many comments to be made, but only three (3!) may suffice to explain his tremendous success: 1) All the time since he became a “GM” resp. during his career Magnus´ father was accompanying him! 2) The new training effect influenced by the grat G.K. may not be underestimated! 3) Magnus Carlsen´s personal developement in devoting to professional chess may be the main factor! – So let us all hope for great chess events in the future, when Magnus Carlsen goes to challenge the “older” chess generation! The late Bobby Fischer may look at this from far behind the scenes, hopefully! A new star is born! “NOBEL PRIZE” for M.C.!
lots of time presssure wins…??
@Nicko
«“The Petroff in Leko-Wang Yue was as dull as only a Petroff can be”
Well said Doggers, the truth must be spoken.»
Again LOL ! Indeed some people treat lie as the new truth! Day after day!
(Well, take another example of your beloved “truth”: Svidler x Motylev, 7th round ECC)
Someone should gather realy dull sicilians, caro-kahns, frenchs… all openings can be dully played and every Petroff can be sharply played. It’s difficult to win against a Petroff without some daring? Yes. Is it one of the defenses with more theoreticaly known “peaceful” variations, for players that BOTH want them? Maybe. All the rest is demagogic nonsense.
I don’t like to play the Petroff myself, but I respect it, and I’ve seen LOTS of great games with it.
Nice fighting from Carlsen. Six K.O’s, that’s twice as many as all the other players combined. He really deserved to win. Lets hope there is more action at the Tal Memorial. Maybe Aronian can put up a fight.
Magnus Carlsen’s win will go down in chess history as the most impressive tournament victory by an 18 year old. Possibly he is the strongest ever player for his age, but it is speculative to compare players of different eras. He has much to learn about championship match play, but he has the greatest player in history, and the greatest match player of all time coaching him. If FIDE were a reputable professional organization, we could look forward to Magnus playing for the World Championship within the next 2 to 3 years, but alas, FIDE is a joke, and the reality is that with the schizophrenic FIDE rules, rules that change with the whim of its incompetent leadership, the best current players may never get the opportunity to play this match.
Aronian? ummm I don’t think so, he is not the one to beat yet. The real challenge are Kramnik and Anand. Anand is Carlsen’s nemesis, and Kramnik is very hard to beat. We are all waiting for Tal Memorial
). Thank you CHESSVIBES!
Pablo on October 9th 5 12 P.M.
Very good translation. Magnus And live, and live the high-caliber chess and the girl schizoid hairy engages in power struggles in the orbit of a board murderer. The raid of the pieces of the kings Magnus opponents will not ever stop.
@Castro You’ve been visiting this site long enough to know that I’ve made clear exactly the same point many times: that the Petroff can lead to highly interesting games. However, one cannot deny that there’s no other opening with such a high percentage of uninteresting fights as this one. So when a Petroff game is great, it’s a great Petroff, but when it’s a game like this one, it’s a typical Petroff. In this opening it’s simply much more difficult for White players to keep the game going.
I agree with Doggers. The Petroff is comparable to the exchange French in pawn structure so it should be no surprise that it is a dull draw in most cases.
In the given example, the Petroff may also have been boring because Leko chose 5.Nc3. My impression is that, over a span of just a few years, this turned from a surprise weapon to a promising line to something at least as drawish as the main lines (once black realized that opposite castling is more dangerous for him?). From white’s perspective, maybe 3.d4 is now best to play for a win – at least it tends to avoid the symmetric pawn structure Jan mentions. [Am I now making publicity for the Chessvibes opening letters?
]
BTW, while Peter Doggers thinks so (”The Petroff in Leko-Wang Yue was as dull as only a Petroff can be but Topalov and Radjabov fought out a game of no less than 95 moves”) I would consider it a matter of taste to call the latter game more interesting. I also enjoy manoeuvering games if the piece shuffling has some deep hidden meaning – as a relatively weak amateur, I usually only “see the light” if one side eventually emerges with an advantage. But the phase from move 20 to 45 included white transferring his king from g1 to b2 – in the end it wasn’t any “safer” here when black could finally end the game with a perpetual. In the meantime, black played Kg8-h7-h6-h7-h6-h7-g8-h7-g8-h7-g8-h7-g8 (12/25 moves, clearly he wouldn’t have objected to an earlier draw). Altogether, the game could almost qualify for a caricature of the Sofia rules – if not for the fact that their main proponent was involved.
@Peter
I agree, except for the last part:
´
“…but when it’s a game like this one, it’s a typical Petroff. In this opening it’s simply much more difficult for White players to keep the game going.”
That sentence(s) and the article’s original one make my post(s) fully pertinent, I think. (Even if I’ve “been visiting this site long enough…”
)
@Thomas
In Topalov x Radjabov they were simply trying (specialy Veselin), but they couldn’t find nothing, or they didn’t dare risking enough, or realy there was nothing.
The dull character of that phase just lye (IMO) in the stupid “modern” time controls.
There is simply no time to think, no time to play chess, specialy at certain kind of positions. Maybe not even Capablanca nor Fischer could play that position better in the given time.
That is a crap that puts me furious!
We know how numbers are important to Kasaprov.
Especially the number 13
He was the 13th world champion, won a key 13th game against Karpov.
Kasaprov was born on 4/13.
Does anyone else think/suspect that part of the reason Kasparov picked Carlsen as his protige – is because Carlsen became a GM at age 13 and 4 months ?
or is this just all coincidence?