
On Friday, the players are having a rest-day, but before that they showed fighting chess: four of the five classical games in round three had a winner and all four wins were interesting.
Carlsen opened with 1.d4 which Grischuk countered with a Grünfeld. However, he soon was in trouble and in the middlegame Carlsen used his strong pawn centre to launch an attack against Black's king. Grischuk found no defense and lost quickly.
Magnus Carlsen analyzing with Judit Polgar (centre) and Anna Rudolf | Photo: Lennart Ootes
Ding Liren played energetically, showed a number of original ideas and converted with good technique.
Levon Aronian easily equalized in the opening and outplayed Shakhriyar Mamedyarov after a tactical sequence which gave Black a queen for two rooks. In principle, two rooks are enough material for the queen but White failed to co-ordinate his pieces and lost.
Levon Aronian | Photo: Lennart Ootes
A Petroff Defence with 5.♘c3 gave White a slightly more pleasant position after the opening but after a couple of inaccuracies by Black White got a better endgame which So won after 66 moves.
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave struggled to get an advantage with the white pieces, both in the Classical and in the Armageddon game. In both games Anand equalized comfortably and two easy draws brought him 1½ points.
Click or tap on the list to watch the second game
Focused and professional: Vishy Anand | Photo: Lennart Ootes
GM Danny King recaps the action from round three
Rk | Player | Classical | Armageddon | Pts | |||
W | D | L | W | L | |||
1 | M. Carlsen | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 5 |
2 | Ding Liren | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
3 | L. Aronian | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
4 | W. So | 1 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
5 | S. Mamedyarov | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3½ |
6 | Yu Yangyi | 0 | 2 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
7 | F. Caruana | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2½ |
8 | V. Anand | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
9 | A. Grischuk | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
10 | M. Vachier-Lagrave | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 |