Carslen maintains the two point lead at Nanjing after 7 rounds

The Norwegian super talent continued his stupendous performance in the Nanjing Pearl Spring Chess tournament when he made an easy draw against former World Champion and World number one rated player Topalov. The game followed a topical variation of the Sveshnikov variation which incidentally determined Carslen’s missing the title in the Mtel super tournament. Topalov was the first to deviate from Shirov- Carlsen game from Mtel on the 21^st move as it was clear that opening was not the reason for Carlsen’s failure in that game. But this did not surprise Carslen as he responded pretty quickly and liquidated the game a drawn endgame albeit being a pawn down.

The talk of the public is clearly about Garry Kasparov’s only real protégé. Carlsen has used various ideas in openings in which Kasparov was considered to be a trendsetter during his active playing days namely Sveshnikov, Gruenfeld and Najdorf variations.

Wang Yue and Jakavenko drew after a protracted struggle in an endgame which started from a Gruenfeld defence Bf4 variation. It is quite interesting to note that Wang has drawn all his 7 games from the event! Radjabov and leko drew their games from a colourless Reti opening.

2nd Pearl Spring  2009

Carlsen is the only player with more than 50 percent score.He has a whopping 5.5/7 and Topalov and Wang Yue are placed in second place with 3.5/7.

This is the link to the official site http://www.chess-pearlspring.com/ where the online games can be viewed. www.chessbase.com also has the games in pgn format.

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