Magnus Carlsen’s main second is Peter Heine Nielsen. Peter has a quirky sense of humour. In 2010 when he was Anand’s chief second against Topalov, Anand played the same line in the Slav Kramnik had done in the 2006 match. A typical PHN joke as far as I am concerned.
Carlsen and PHN get along really well, from what I have heard. And the idea to play the Trumpowski can have arisen from either of them. But it is certainly a conscious joke that then evolved to a real choice…
The quiz has been closed. I will put up a link to the excel sheet once I have edited it.
After move 23 I am remembering a game Ulf Andersson won in the Swedish league in 2002. I am pretty sure it is in Excelling at Technical Chess.
14…Qd5 was probably a small misstep. There was no point in exchanging everything.
But still, Karjakin is more resilient than Anand…
@Jacob Aagaard
You have a good memory, indeed the game between Andersson and Ivanov (Catalan Opening) in 2000 Swedish Team Championship (from your Excelling at Technical Chess) reaches to similar structure in later middle game and end game as this game (Black has doubled f-pawn and castled; then Knight vs Bishop endgame after trading rook).
I think the difference is that Ivanov had played a6 and b7-b5, which is potentially an additional weakness. Jacob critised the Plan with f6-f5 in that game, the Same setup as karjakin played. If you have the Book you should check the comments by Jacob,very instructive.
I Linke in the game Last Night the moment when Karjakin could change the rooks with Rc7. It looked first like clear draw, but the resulting pawnendgame after Ne5 ! Looks winning
The game of Ulf Andersson and some comments by Jacob (from the book ETC) also came to my mind while watching the game yesterday with some club mates.
Andersson used the “hook” on f5 to break with g2-g4 and later exploited the weak pawn on h7 (and later, the weakness on b5). Carlsen on the other hand decided to play f2-f4. It would be way too easy to criticise this decision by Magnus out of hand. Karjakin also probably defended more accurate than Ivanov in the aforementioned game…
There is probably a LOT to be learned about the endgame analysing the Andersson game and this one together…