Karjakin's Early Corus Encounters with Carlsen

In the previous episode, Karjakin's First Encounters with Carlsen, we saw that the two young stars played in tournaments without meeting each other over the board, then first played in Corus 2005. Their early careers can be tracked in the Corus (Wijk aan Zee NED) events.

Karjakin's first appearance at Corus was the GMB (the GM 'B' round robin) 2003 event, where he finished fifth with +3-2=8. He did not play the following year, when Carlsen won the GMC Corus 2004 section with +9-1=3, giving him promotion to the next GMB event.

The crosstable for GMB Corus 2005 is shown below. Karjakin won with +7-1=5, while Carlsen finished in the middle of the pack with +3-2=8. Their individual game was a draw.

In Corus 2006, Karjakin finished the GMA section with +4-3=6, losing to both co-winners Anand and Topalov. After Carlsen tied for first with Motylev in the GMB section with +6-1=6, both players were promoted to next year's GMA, setting up another direct encounter with Karjakin.

In GMA Corus 2007 (shown above), Karjakin finished on 50% with +3-3=7, while Carlsen tied for last place with +0-4=9. Their individual game, Sergey Karjakin vs Magnus Carlsen; Corus (2007), was another draw.

The following year, GMA Corus 2008, Karjakin did not play, while Carlsen finished +5-2=6 to tie for first with Aronian. in the Karjakin - Carlsen rivalry, the Norwegian thus reached a significant milestone first.

[Crosstables taken from Mark Crowther's The Week In Chess (TWIC), the chess world's premier news service.]