King Carlsen in the kings

The Kings tournament in Medias, Rumania has come to an end with yet another Carlsen victory.
Five wins and five draws for the Norwegian and a comfortable two points gap between him and the second placed pair.
If we count rating points, Magnus Carlsen can now claim to be the World's second strongest ever player after Garry Kasparov.

A real Black-fest in the final round with a clean sheet for the Black pieces.

Carlsen achieved a comfortable position after early simplification in the Grünfeld. He then battered away at White's centre and took the initiative, before engineering a rook ending with an extra pawn. At the end a second pawn was about to fall when Wang Yue resigned.

WhiteRatingCountryResultBlackRatingCountryNo. MovesOpening
Wang Yue2752CHN0-1Magnus Carlsen2813NOR47Grünfeld Defence
Boris Gelfand2741ISR0-1Teimour Radjabov2740AZE30King's Indian Defence
Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu2672ROU0-1Ruslan Ponomariov2733UKR23Four Knight's Defence

Nisipeanu tried the Four Knights against Ponomariov, but the Ukrainian soon obtained a good position. When the position opened up on the right-hand side of the board, the Rumanian found himself with his bishop locked out of play on a2, passive rooks and no real defence to Black's kingside threats.

Boris Gelfand lost against an inspired Radjabov who jostled and activated before the Israeli was fully organized. The Black knight-leap ...Nd4 led to great difficulties for White, especially combined with ...a5 as then White's queenside crumbled.

PositionNameCountryRatingPre-tournament rating changeWorld RankingExpected scorePointsRating change
1stMagnus CarlsenNOR2813-16.27.5+13
2nd-3rdBoris GelfandISR2741-91155.5+5
2nd-3rdTeimour RadjabovAZE2740-1355.5+5
4thRuslan PonomariovUKR2733-4184.84.5-3
5thLiviu-Dieter NisipeanuROU2672+11593.84+2
6thWang YueCHN2752+385.23-22

Teimour Radjabov's win brings him up to equal second with today's opponent Boris Gelfand.

Ponomariov's win sees him leap-frog Nisipeanu and take fourth spot.

Wang Yue had a shocker of a tournament and loses a packet of rating points.

Of course the main consequence of this event, in the greater picture, is Carlsen's gain of 13 rating points takes him to a virtual rating of 2826. However the tournament has finished too late to count on the next rating list that is officially released on the 1st of July.

He will therefore have to be patient and wait for the 1st of Septemeber before he will have all his points ratified, and of course he would then be attributed a mega-rating, taking him to second in the all-time Elo ratings after a certain Garry Kasparov.

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