{"id":3711,"date":"2019-07-13T08:55:58","date_gmt":"2019-07-13T08:55:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/?p=3711"},"modified":"2019-07-13T17:51:44","modified_gmt":"2019-07-13T17:51:44","slug":"carlsen-wins-croatia-grand-chess-tour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/carlsen-wins-croatia-grand-chess-tour\/","title":{"rendered":"Carlsen Wins Croatia Grand Chess Tour"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Croatia Grand Chess Tour title 2019 is won by Magnus Carlsen of\nNorway.<\/strong>Carlsen\nfinished a point ahead of Wesley\nSo<\/strong>, whose 7\/11 was good for a 2881 performance rating, $60,000\nand 15 GCT points. The American GM said about Carlsen: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It feels like second place is already a victory whenever he’s\nplaying right now because it’s like Bobby Fischer<\/strong> back in the\n’70s or ’60s when he was playing the U.S. Championship and others are just\nplaying for second place.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anish Giri<\/strong> had his own, witty way of describing\nCarlsen’s current invincibility, saying the others have to wait out the storm.\n“All storms come to an end. I am sure eventually he will be very old, very\ntired!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fabiano Caruana<\/strong>: “He is winning games with\nremarkable ease. Normally these things don’t happen; like today, he ends the\ngame with an hour on the clock…. I think that things are all falling together\nfor him in every stage of the game.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Expressions of this sentiment have been around for the last few\nmonths and have now been put down in hard numbers as well. On the next FIDE\nrating list, Carlsen’s Elo will be exactly the same as his highest published\nrating: 2882 as it was in May 2014. The gap with world number two Caruana will\nbe 64 points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 28-year-old Norwegian GM himself was over the moon after\nscoring six draws and five wins in Zagreb\u2014all the more significant to him\nbecause of the two extra rounds compared to Norway Chess, for example, and\nespecially the sheer strength of the field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carlsen noted that he “had never scored anything like plus\nfive against such a field before” and later added:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“For me it’s huge. It’s the first time basically that I’ve\nplayed an event like this\u201412 players, all absolute elite. I really didn’t know\nwhat to expect, I’ve been playing a lot recently and I felt a bit spent towards\nthe end of Norway Chess. But’s been a dream, especially the second half has\ngone so well.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comparing the winner to Fischer has a fine parallel\u2014after receiving\nhis trophy, Carlsen thanked the Croatian fans. “I always heard about the\nchess culture [in former Yugoslavia] and I have to say that it delivered in\nevery way.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Almost half a century ago, in the same city, Yugoslav chess lovers saw another dominating player from the West. It was in Rovinj (first half) and then Zagreb (second half) where Fischer scored one of his great performances in 1970 as he won the Tournament of Peace, an 18-player(!) round robin, with 13\/18, two points clear of the rest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With his win in the last round over MVL, Carlsen has won his sixth\nclassical tournament in a row and extended his unbeaten streak in classical\ngames to 79. For this, he used the 8.Be3<\/strong> line in the Gruenfeld\nagainst an expert in that opening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vachier-Lagrave rarely loses with the Gruenfeld and had never lost\nin this particular variation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This endgame, which the now-retired 14th world champion Vladimir\nKramnik<\/strong> liked to play as well with white, is the classic Gruenfeld\nfight between Black’s pawn majority on the queenside versus White’s passed\nd-pawn (coined “Delroy” by Jonathan Rowson<\/strong> 20 years\nago in his classic Understanding the Grunfeld<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I was definitely happy to get this position. It’s not much\nfor White but I thought for the tournament situation, there would be little\nrisk so that’s good, and maybe some chances to play as well,” said\nCarlsen.\n\nIn this game, Delroy made the difference as MVL\nerred on move 28. The endgame is unpleasant but possibly lost only after he\ntraded rooks.\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Croatia Grand Chess Tour title 2019 is won by Magnus Carlsen of Norway.Carlsen finished a point ahead of Wesley So, whose 7\/11 was good for a 2881 performance rating, $60,000 and 15 GCT points. The American GM said about Carlsen:  “It feels like second place is already a victory whenever he’s playing right now because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":3712,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[122,59],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-3711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-affairs-articles","tag-chess","tag-sports-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3711"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3730,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3711\/revisions\/3730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3711"},{"taxonomy":"offerexpiration","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/offerexpiration?post=3711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}