By Steve Giddins

As the tournament passed its halfway point, the big story of the day was the defeat of the leader, Alexey Shirov, at the hands of Hikaru Nakamura. The Latvian's detractors had already pointed out that his blistering 5/5 start had been achieved without playing any of the tournament favourites, and today was his first encounter with one such. The opening, an old-style Pelikan, seemed satisfactory enough, but once his early initiative was extinguished, he was left with a permanently exposed king, which eventually proved his undoing.

The other main clash of the day was Carlsen-Ivanchuk, which the former won with unexpected ease. Ivanchuk had one of those notorious off-days, with which his career has been punctuated.

Some of the day's best entertainment was provided by Smeets-Dominguez, even though it was a draw in 30 moves, 20 of which had been seen before!

The games Caruana-Anand and Tiviakov-Leko were both fairly uneventful draws – for the World Champion, his seventh draw in succession.

Van Wely-Kariakin had the unenviable distinction of being the shortest draw of the tournament so far, just 16 moves of theory, and barely 20 minutes' play. But for the Dutchman, it did at least break a five-game losing streak.

Finally, in the day's longest game, Nigel Short was agonisingly close to inflicting a rare defeat on Kramnik's Petroff, but the win slipped through his fingers in a long ending.

The youthful leaders of the B and C Groups both suffered partial setbacks today, but retain their overall lead. Giri salvaged a draw a pawn down in a rook ending against L'Ami, whilst Ray Robson was defeated by Vocaturo.

From Chessbase.com