Tata Steel (Wijk aan Zee) Underway

In fact the Tata Steel Chess Tournament started this weekend - in person - and as usual it's a mix of super-elite players (e.g. Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Anish Giri) and some players from the second tier (e.g. Dutch players other than Giri, the winner of last year's B-group). That helps make things spicy, and for the moment one of the Liliputians (relatively speaking!) is off to the early lead: Nils Grandelius is the only player with 2/2, thanks to wins over Alexander Donchenko and Jan-Krzysztof Duda. It's a 13-round event, so the odds of Grandelius remaining in first by the time it's over are extremely low, but the chance for Rocky to beat Apollo is always part of the excitement of any sporting event.

Three of the top dogs mentioned above (Carlsen, Caruana, and Giri) are just half a point behind; here's the schedule for round 3, with player scores given in parentheses:

• Esipenko (1) - Vachier-Lagrave (1)
• Grandelius (2) - Harikrishna (1)
• Caruana (1.5) - Duda (.5)
• Giri (1.5) - Donchenko (0)
• Wojtaszek (1) - Van Foreest (Jorden) (1)
• Carlsen (1.5) - Tari (.5)
• Firouzja (.5) - Anton Guijarro (1)