GM Alex Yermolinsky video recap 

Standings Pos. Points Player Rating 1-3 1.0 Magnus Carlsen 2851     Vladimir Kramnik 2801     Anish Giri 2790 4-7 0.5 Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 2788     Levon Aronian 2784     Veselin Topalov 2754     Li Chao 2755 8-5 0.0 Pavel Eljanov 2765     Pentala Harikrishna 2763     Nils Grandelius 2649

 

There are two great news about Round 1 of the Altibox Norway chess tournament: Anish Giri interrupted a fastidious streak of draws after the Candidates', winning against Eljanov; Magnus Carlsen dominated Harikrishna and won the first round of a tournament after over two years. With Kramnik beating the qualified Swedish GM Grandelius, all the top three guys won with white today, in a rather spectacular round. Carlsen's game went down to a crazy time-scramble, and the world champion showed once again that he can think really fast.

MVL wasn't able to get a lot out of the opening, and LI Chao found a nice tactic to enter an opposite-color bishop endgame, which he held comfortably.

Aronian found himself in trouble; for a while Topalov had the upper hand in the game, but then the Bulgarian ace failed to find the determination to bring home the full point.

An exciting first round of a tournament that promises to be really interesting!

Today Radja is the winner of the GTR contest. He was able to guess 4 out of 5 results. Well done!