Game of the Day: 12/24/2015 edition

And now to look at some actual quality chess. Magnus Carlsen (FIDE 2834) faced Li Chao (2750) for the first time today. It was the first board of the fifth round of the Qatar Masters Open. Not many opens have an average FIDE rating of 2792 on the first board! (And we'll go higher in coming rounds, no doubt.) It was a "let's hand each other lit sticks of dynamite and see who goes BOOM first" kind of game. Carlsen played the currently popular 3 f3 line against Li's Grunfeld, and it went from there. I've only added a note about an amusing possibility on white's 28th move. If you want real annotations, look elsewhere! To that end, I recommend FM Mike Klein's article at ChessVibes both for annotations and post-game comments from Carlsen, as well as recaps of other action from the day. Here's the Carlsen-Li game.