The action heated up today: there were no short, lame draws in the A group, and both Carlsen and Nakamura won their first games.
Nakamura's win won the game of the day prize, and you can read his comments about it here.
Carlsen-Smeets was fascinating too, a Botvinnik Variation Semi-Slav that saw Smeets continue the rehabilitation of a line thought dead years ago on account of a famous Kamsky-Kramnik game. Smeets' 25...Bc5 seems to be the first new move, and to all appearances he was doing fine and had prepared extraordinarily well. There was still lots of play in the position, however, and in spite of Kasparov and his database, Carlsen isn't #1 in the world because of his opening preparation. Carlsen kept creating problems for Smeets, who started going downhill with 30...Qd5. (30...c3 31.bxc3 Bxe3 32.Qxe3 Qxf6 33.Rb1 Kc8 34.Rxb3 Qxh6 35.Qxh6 Rxh6 is drawn, while experiments like 31.Bxd4 exd4 32.Qe7+ Qd7 look more dangerous for White than for Black.) A couple of moves later, 32...b5? was a fatal error. (As Peter Svidler insightfully noted in his commentary on ICC, when the pawn is on b6 Black's king is reasonably safe because it can hide from a rook on the a-file on both b5 and c6.)
Black was thoroughly lost, but Carlsen gave him a reprieve with 38.Rf4? Had Black played 38...Kb6! White's options were a position with no advantage or returning the rook to d4. Unfortunately, the latter would have allowed a threefold repetition, so 38.Rf4 tossed away the win. Smeets had no time to work out his good fortune, however, and blundered the game.
Neither Carlsen nor Nakamura is leading, however, because Shirov is now 2-0. He defeated Caruana in a rooks and opposite-colored bishop ending, grinding him down in 64 moves. Move 34 was a controversial moment, as Caruana eschewed the obvious 34...Ra8. On ICC, Svidler felt that the move would lead to an almost immediate handshake, while Caruana's decision not to go for a rook swap made the game go longer but without any positive purpose. Ultimately, I think Svidler is right (yes, it's brave of me to agree with one of the world's greatest players), but I also think that Caruana, possibly a little short of time leading up to the time control, may have been afraid of 35.Ra5 in reply. After 35...Rxa5 36.bxa5 White has an outside passer and his king can race to c5. So he might have felt that the trade was needlessly risky, and preferred a little passivity and suffering for the sure draw down the road. It's a reasonable decision, even if didn't work out this time.
Now to the draws: Anand-Short was a Ragozin QGD that turned out very well for Short, but Anand managed to outplay him a little at a time. It wasn't quite enough, though, as Short just held on in a double rook ending.
Ivanchuk-Tiviakov showed that the Scandinavian with 3...Qd6 is still viable. Ivanchuk got nothing, but like Anand and Carlsen, managed to outplay Tiviakov and gain an advantage. Like Anand and unlike Carlsen, however, he didn't get enough of an advantage to win, and Tiviakov held the rook ending.
Kramnik-Leko was short but it wasn't dull, and it was only half-wimpy. Kramnik played very risky chess, and stood worse thanks to Leko's excellent defense. Fortunately for the former champion, Leko didn't feel like pushing his edge, and the game was drawn by repetition.
Finally, Karjakin-Dominguez was a very sharp English Attack against the Najdorf, and it looks like Dominguez had the better of the theoretical battle before the game wound down to a draw, which leads me to a little tangent. Has the Kasparov era passed us by? I don't just mean this in the sense of Kasparov the player becoming a part of chess history, but maybe Kasparov the analyst is as well. Carlsen (working with Kasparov) and Karjakin (working with Kasparov's long-time permanent second Dokhoian) probably prepare as well as just about anyone else in professional chess, but it's not at all obvious that they prepare better than their rivals. They are every bit as likely to be surprised as to deliver the surprise, so it would appear that the colossal advantage in preparation Kasparov owned over his rivals for the last 20 years of his career has been eliminated or at least greatly diminished.
A-Group Standings:
1. Shirov 2
2-3. Nakamura, Carlsen 1½
4-10. Tiviakov, Dominguez, Karjakin, Anand, Ivanchuk, Kramnik, van Wely 1
11-14. Smeets, Caruana, Leko, Short ½
Round 3 Pairings:
Dominguez - Anand
Leko - Karjakin
Caruana - Kramnik
Tiviakov - Shirov
Smeets - Ivanchuk
van Wely - Carlsen
Short - Nakamura
In the B-Group, Giri won again, and leads with a 2-0 score. Ni Hua and Naiditsch, both of whom also won today, are half a point behind, and Nyback also won today to get back to 50%.
In the C-Group, it's Robson who leads with a 2-0 score, half a point ahead of Li Chao, Vocaturo, Kuipers and Peng Zhaoqin. Li Chao and Vocaturo drew with each other, while Kuipers and Peng were the day's other winners (in addition to Robson).
Full results, standings and games for all three groups can be found here. For my comments to Carlsen-Smeets and Shirov-Caruana, click here.