Carlsen Blazes Through Nanjing

Maybe bringing Kasparov on board was a good idea after all. Magnus Carlsen has been utterly dominant thusfar in the Nanjing Pearl Spring Chess Tournament scoring 4.5/5 to begin the event. Who is he beating? Some of the world's top players: Veselin Topalov, Peter Leko, Teimour Radjabov and Dmitry Jakovenko have all fallen to the Norwegian youngster, with only China's Wang Yue managing to hold him to a draw. The tournament is nearly decided at the halfway point, since other than Carlsen's four wins, there hasn't been a single decisive game, meaning he already has a two point lead over Wang Yue and a 2.5 point cushion on the rest of the field.

Performances like this are rare, but not unheard of, even at the elite level. The most recent instance of such an attention-grabbing start may have come in the 2005 FIDE World Championship Tournment, where Topalov started with a blistering 6.5/7 over a field that was arguably stronger than the one in Nanjing. It will be interesting to see if Carlsen will try to continue pouring on the points to make a statement (but risk bringing one or more players back into contention should he lose), or if he'll attempt to draw out and take first place by coasting to the finish. One potential bit of drama: Carlsen appears to be about 12 points shy of Topalov on the current unofficial live ratings list. If Carlsen stays hot, or Topalov drops a game or two, it's possible that Carlsen could come out of this event as the (unofficial) world #1.

If you'd like to play over one of Carlsen's gems, here's his most recent win in the event, over Radjabov:

White: Magnus Carlsen
Black: Teimour Radjabov
Nanjing Pearl Spring Tournament 2009
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 e6 4.O-O Nge7 5.c3 a6 6.Ba4 b5 7.Bc2 Bb7 8.Qe2 d5 9.e5 d4 10.Be4 Qb6 11.d3 Rd8 12.a4 Nd5 13.axb5 axb5 14.cxd4 cxd4 15.Nbd2 Nf4 16.Qd1 Nb4 17.Nb3 Bxe4 18.dxe4 Nfd3 19.Bg5 Rc8 20.Nfxd4 Nxb2 21.Qe2 Nc4 22.Rfc1 Bc5 23.Nxb5 O-O 24.Nxc5 Nxe5 25.Be7 1-0