By Steve Giddins

When he was romping away at the start, with 5/5, Alexey Shirov steadfastly refused to talk about winning the tournament, explaining that it was still early days, and much chess had yet to be played. Today his caution was seen to be justified, as he went down to his second defeat, and now finds himself out of the lead, for the first time in the event. His nemesis came in the shape of Vishy Anand, who thereby won his first game in this event, but the World Champion can count himself very lucky, as Shirov missed a winning tactic on move 39.

This left Kramnik able to take sole lead, after a draw with Ivanchuk. The former seemed to have promisning kingside attacking chances, but his sacrifice yielded only an unclear position, and in mutual time-trouble, the players agreed a draw two moves later.

At the start of yesterday's game against Kramnik, Magnus Carlsen thought for two minutes or so over his first move. As Kramnik joked afterwards, “He probably had a big discussion with Garry before the game, who wanted to go 1.e4 and Magnus 1.d4, something like that!” Today, with Black against Kariakin, Carlsen surprised everyone in the opening once again, by choosing the French Defence, an opening neither he nor his illustrious trainer have ever played in a classical game, to the best of my database's knowledge. It certainly proved an inspired choice, as Kariakin achieved nothing special from the opening, and then overstretched fatally in the middlegame.

The day's other winner was Sergey Tiviakov, who beat Jan Smeets in a very obscure game, in which the latter's clock handling once again proved pivotal.

The remaining three games were all drawn. Leko and Short drew a long, hard battle, Dominguez failed to capitalize on a seemingly promising position against Nakamura, whilst Loek van Wely saw a winning position against Caruana slip through his fingers.

In Group B Anish Giri drew top seed Arkadij Naiditsch and remains sole first.

In Group C Ray Robson lost for a second time in a row, in a round where all games
were decided (and Black won four games).

From chessbase.com