Karjakin wins Norway - Again

Sergey Karjakin has made it back to back wins in the Norway Supertournament, repeating his victory from last year. After a fairly sluggish start (by all players really), Karjakin finished with 3 straight wins, to keep half a point ahead of home town hero Magnus Carlsen. While Carlsen also won his last round game, it was his round 8 draw with Peter Svidler that sabotaged his tournament. In an almost winning position Carlsen missed the chance to share the lead with Karjakin by failing to spot the right continuation. In third place was Alexander Grischuk, who provided a lot of the tournaments early excitement with 2 wins and 2 losses in the first 4 rounds, before picking up the important final round point.
Apart from Karjakin, the player who picked up the most rating points was bottom seed Simen Agdestein. At one point it looked as though he might finish the event with 9 draws, but losses to Topalov and Carlsen in the final rounds left him at the bottom of the table. But as he was rated significantly lower than the rest of the field, 3.5/9 resulted in a rating boost for him.
With this event finished, some of the players are off to the World Blitz and Rapid Championships in Dubai. This event has attracted a very strong field, and the action starts tomorrow. The tournament website is here, with the first 6 rounds of the Rapid starting proceedings.