Chess: Carlsen v Mamedyarov after Anand makes one-move blunder

Magnus Carlsen and his predecessor as world champion, India’s Vishy Anand, were locked in a close race for first prize at Stavanger as Norway’s annual elite tournament approaches Friday’s final round. Anand, 52, had rolled back the years and scored several wins in the creative style of his heyday, but fell for a one-move tactic by Shak Mamedyarov in the penultimate round. Then Carlsen won from a drawn position against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and the race is now between the No 1 and Mamedyarov.

Carlsen has conceded four draws and lost three of the consequent tie-breaks. The 31-year-old can still take positives from Stavanger if he can finish well. After seven classical games, excluding the tie-break Armageddons, Carlsen was making modest progress towards his declared goal of a 2900 record rating.

Carlsen was most happy with his smooth and logical round-three win against Teimour Radjabov, where he accepted an early positional pawn sacrifice then neutralised all attempts at counterplay until he could convert his extra material.

Stavanger is unique in its rule requiring all drawn games to be immediately replayed as Armageddons, where White has 10 minutes on the clock for all moves and Black seven minutes, and where a draw on the board counts as a win for Black on the score table. After move 40 there is a per move increment of just one second, which means that any Armageddon which gets that far with the result still unclear is likely to end in a frenetic scramble.

When Stavanger introduced Armageddon a few years ago, there were comments that this was a measure designed to favour Carlsen’s impressive speed skills. Indeed, Carlsen’s Armageddon results in the past three years have been crushing: 14 successes out of 15 with just a