Stavanger

The powerful tournament in Stavanger, Norway, draws to a close at the end of this week. World champion Magnus Carlsen dominated the blitz event which preceded the main competition. Sadly for the home crowd, Carlsen got off to a very bad start in the classical time limits competition that followed, with the energetic American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura seizing the leading role. Here are some key extracts from play.
 
Aronian–Carlsen: Norway Chess, Stavanger 2017
(see diagram 1)
 
In this tense situation, where White has a mass of pawns in exchange for a bishop, Carlsen conceives of a plausible defensive plan to resurrect his dormant bishop and ferry it round to the defence of his king. Paradoxically, this logical try turns out to be defective. 31 … e5 Black can put up more resistance with 31 … Rf8 trying to target White’s pawn on f2 and leaving his bishop on c8 as a blockader. The text leads to a swift debacle.