Carlsen's Christmas Cracker

Christmas came early this year for Magnus Carlsen, as the young Norwegian - who recently turned 20, so no longer a teenager - fought back strongly from losing two of his opening three games to finish on a high by winning the 50,000 euro first prize at the 2010 London Chess Classic.

Despite his up and down performance in London, Carlsen proved to be the most decisive player in the field with four wins, two loses only one draw to his name for a plus two final score of 13/21 (using the preferred soccer scoring system in London).  And with the clash of the big two of Vishy Anand and Vladmir Kramnik being a draw, Carlsen, after beating cellar dweller Nigel Short, also has the additional Christmas bonus of now reclaiming his place at the top of the official rating list come its publication on the first day of January 2011.

Anand and the improbable figure of "late bloomer" Luke McShane of England proved to be the only two players to go through the tournament undefeated - and for the former, it proved to be an unbelievable, career-best performance as he shared second place with the world champion on 11 points.

And just like last month's Tal Memorial in Moscow, the ever-fighting Hikaru Nakamura's game was the last to finish, as the American crowd-pleaser tried to squeeze a win out of Michael Adams of England to leapfrog Anand & McShane to take outright second place behind the tournament winner.  Nakamura finished on 10 points along with Kramnik, but he took the bragging rights to fourth place on tiebreak by virtue of his round two, birthday treat win over the former world champion.

Chess.FM's coverage of the London Chess Classic also ended on a high with the (Christmas) cracker of a commentary combination with Gata Kamsky and Joel Benjamin, who together share five US Championship titles!  Both so expertly broke down all the action on the boards that, as a Holiday special for ICC members, we have below a bonus of two final round GOTD's from London by Joel and Gata!

The Chess.FM Team would like to take this opportunity to thank all the ICC members for their unstinting support throughout 2010.  We'll be back after the holiday break again with all the best in live action commentary in 2011, starting with the Tata Steel Chess Tournament from Wijk aan Zee…..