Stronger than Ever?

Seven tournaments in a row.  

The World Champion, after a couple of years in which he seemed to have gotten back to Earth, is again dwelling on a different planet. 

Magnus simply wins every event he participates in. His rating is again approaching the mythical 2900 barrier - only seven points shy of his best ever -  and if he is not there yet, it's mostly due to his opponents' "weak" ratings. Magnus would need 3-4 players with a rating over 2850. And we would too, to make his hegemony a bit less oppressive.

This year the Altibox Norway Chess Tournament presented a new format, evidently thought to favor the local hero.
After the classical game, in case of a draw, an Armageddon game would decide what may be considered a mini-match.
Everybody knows that nobody can beat Carlsen in a Blitz game, and forcing the poor players to face Magnus in an Armageddon game was, to say the least, cruel.
Magnus himself admitted that he was not paying so much attention to the classical games, for he knew he'd have won the Armageddon games.
And that's exactly what happened: Magnus won two classical games and six Armageddon games, finishing three whole points ahead of the runners-up, Aronian and Yu.


Thanks to Mark Crowther and The Week in Chess for the crosstable

Here is an example of Magnus' superiority, commentated by GM Joel Benjamin.

Last week, I met the best fan of the World Champion: Tarjei Svensen.

We had a nice stroll in the park and chatted about... Magnus, of course! Tarjei thinks that Magnus has found stability in his peripatetic life and that is one of the reasons which brought Carlsen back to the absolute domination of the chess world. When you have already won all the winnable, and you have been on top for almost a decade, the fact you can still find inside yourself the motivation to fight and to show the world you're as unreachable as a true Star, is - in my opinion - a small miracle. Way to go, young man. Congratulations.