Nice win by the Swede.

He's not a Swede. He's a Norwegian.

One speculative thought is: Are the actual young players more prone to blunders (when they have to think by their own, out of theoretical lines...) because the exacerbated use of computers which maybe is making them to somewhat lose the capacity of "getting-into-the-position" (for example, if you are into the grave situation of the position of the lost game above, you have to see the move 39. hxg6..), which need years of positional training and ending technique, rather than memorization of meaningless computer variations? I think that if one analyse the games of Capablanca, Alekhine, Smislov, Botvinnik, etc., and compare them with the ones we are watching right now (Corus, WCC, Linares, etc..), probably we will find that the "positional and ending technical errors" are now more frequent. Are nowadays players compensating this "weakness" with more opening theory knowledge..? And maybe, if this is right, could it be that computer technology is turning humans more incapable of "getting deep into the hidden causes of the problems"..? How to correct this situation of "slavery" regarding the machine influence? Is our long term survival threatened by intellectual dependence on machines?

It's a very speculative thought. Unless you can back it up with data, there's no real reason to believe you're correct. There are so many possible counterarguments, for example: is there an indication that nowadays players spend a higher percentage of their training time on openings then they used to do? I'm not so sure, just that nowadays the time devoted to studying the opening can be spent much more efficiently due to the existance of databases and engines. It's no more than speculation.

Terrance: I was of course reffering to A. Giri versus T. Hillarp Persson, 2009.

Mike: I think you are right, masters of the twentieth century had indeed better results in endgames. But that is only due to adjournment system, which gave them time for rest and analysis. Today GMs reach the endgame phase after four hours of hard thinking, which can imho explain their propensity for failure.

"I think that if one analyse the games of Capablanca, Alekhine, Smislov, Botvinnik, etc., and compare them with the ones we are watching right now (Corus, WCC, Linares, etc..), probably we will find that the “positional and ending technical errors” are now more frequent."

Perhaps Capablanca aside, I really don't think so. It is hard to compare, of course, but I think that modern grandmasters are superior to their predecessors in every phase of the game. Then again, the only statistics I have seen is an analysis of WC games, summarised in Chessbase portal about two years ago - that one, if I recall correctly, found that Capa's moves had matched some chess engine's first choices most closely.

Yes, like Alexander said.

Players use to have more time for their moves (more than 2 hours for 40 moves) and they had adjournements after four hours of play. The game then continued next day but in the meantime players could analyse the adjourned position into details. Thats why it seems that they made less mistakes. They were well rested, they had more time, and they were very well prepared for the given position.

Linares, Round 10: On two great interesting games Wang Yue and Radjabov defeated respectively Carlsen and Aronian. My first impression on Wang Yue game was that he tried to avoid the too much actually analyzed lines and it seems he succeed because Carlsen apparently lost the attention on the central squares which were object of direct attack by Black forces with the great moves 8...Bc3; 9...b4 and 10...e5! which allowed Black to build a great centralization and development advantage which resulted in a rapid strong attack! Another indication of the ingenuity of the young players due to the excess of "computerized" chess knowledge?

Ooops...! Typo error: The Wang Yue good moves I referred to were: 8…Bf3; 9…b4 and 10…e5! and not 8...Bc3...