Pentala Harikrishna, Magnus Carlsen, Anish Giri, Fabiano Caruana and Nils Grandelius
all share the lead on 2/3 in the early stages of the Tata Steel Masters.
For a while it looked like Fabiano Caruana would take the sole lead of the
tournament but his opponent Jan-Krzysztof Duda put up maximum resistance
and eventually escaped with a draw. Alireza Firouzja beat David Anton
in the final game of the day to finish, he eventually broke through in
a queenless middle game to win in 61 moves. Pentala Harikrishna
beat leader Nils Grandelius on the black side of a French where he
completely took over the initiative following the error 25.Bc1?
The remaining games were drawn Magnus Carlsen was frustrated by a solid
opening from Aryan Tari, Alexander Donchenko finally got on the scoreboard
with a comfortable draw with black against Giri, Radoslaw Wojtaszek
drew a Semi-Tarrasch with Jorden van Foreest and MVL sacrificed his
Queen with black against Andrey Esipenko for more than enough compensation
but the game too was drawn.
A more detailed summary in the body of the article.
Round 3 standings:
1st-5th Harikrishna, Carlsen, Giri, Caruana, Grandelius 2pts;
6th-10th Vachier-Lagrave, Van Foreest, Esipenko, Firouzja, Wojtaszek 1.5pts
11th-13th Duda, Anton Guijarro, Tari 1pt
14th Donchenko 0.5pts.
Round 4 pairings 19th Jan 1pm GMT:
MVL-Anton,
Tari-Firouzja,
Van Foreest-Carlsen,
Donchenko-Wojtaszek,
Duda-Giri,
Harikrishna-Caruana,
Esipenko-Grandelius.
