Carlsen on top of chess Olympus

NORWEGIAN Magnus Carlsen, who turned 19 on 30th November, won the London Chess Classic held at the Olympia Conference Centre from 8-16 December. The Category 18 event with an average rating of 2696 is a single-round robin contest using the Bilbao scoring system of 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw and 0 for a loss.

During the seventh and final round, all three of the winless Englishmen attempted to score their first win but only two succeeded. Michael Adams prevailed over compatriot Luke McShane while David Howell defeated China’s Ni Hua to share 3-4 places with Adams. Current number one English player Nigel Short tried all his might to score a win against Carlsen but the latter also has the same determination. The two finally halved the point when Short was about to pluck Carlsen's remaining pawn in the queen yet pawnless ending.

Earlier former world champion Vladimir Kramnik of Russia halved the point with Hikaru Nakamura of the USA to wind up with 12 points, one point behind the winner Carlsen. Nakamura and Short were unable to win a game, with the former losing one game while the latter suffered two losses.

In addition to the tournament victory, Carlsen is now absolutely certain to top the next FIDE Rating list which will come out on 1st January 2009. He is now the youngest player ever to achieve that feat and also the first player from a western nation to reach the top since Bobby Fischer in the 1970s.

He aims to become the world chess champion and shows his determination by engaging the services of Gary Kasparov, the former world champion (1985-2000) and number one player for twenty years (1985-2005).

That he would become the world chess champion is never doubted. The only question that remains to be answered is when?
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Class of 1990 dominates top juniors list

WITH a meteoric gain of 29 points Norway’s Magnus Carlsen has increased his lead by 78 points over Ukraine’s Sergey Karjakin who has a rating of 2723. A close third is French champion Maxime Vachier-Lagrave with 2718. The first 5 places remain unchanged although Italy’s Fabiano Caruana went down by 10 points. Bulgaria’s Sergei Zhigalko took 6th place without any change in rating due to Russia’s Dmitry Andreikin’s loss of 23 points who dropped to 8th place. The Philippines’ Wesley So, despite losing 4 rating points, came 7th also on account of Andreikin’s rating dive.

Nine out of twenty, or roughly half in the list, are born in 1990. These include the top 3 – Carlsen, Karjakin, and Vachier-Lagrave. The others are Russia’s Dmitry Andreikin, Ukraine’s Yuriy Kuzubov, Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi, France’s Romain Edoard, Vietnam’s Nguyen Ngoc Truong Son, and Russia’s Ildar Khairullin.


Girls list is Chinese’ domain

China’s Ju Wenjun’s gigantic gain of 66 rating points caused a major shakeup in the top girls ranking. Previously untitled and ranked 8th, Ju, now with the women’s grandmaster title, leaped to third place with 2509. Fellow Chinese GM Hou Yifan and Slovenian IM Anna Muzychuk retained their 1-2 places. Ukraine GM Katerina Lahno and Indian IM Harika Dronavali each dropped a rank due to Ju’s rise. The 5 Chinese girls in the list are among the top 11 players.