Teimour Radjabov hasn't been in any world championship matches or gotten too close yet, and while he was one of the youngest players ever to become a grandmaster his presence at #4 on the rating list is a little "sneaky". But there he is, past 2790, and for the moment he is the sole leader at the 2012 Tal Memorial.
Today he defeated Luke McShane with the black pieces, taking advantage of his opponent's time pressure. Their game was a Rossolimo, but after 5.b3, as played twice by Viswanathan Anand in the world championship, Radjabov chose the older 5...d6 instead of Gelfand's 5...e5. The game was roughly balanced between McShane's better structure and Radjabov's bishop pair and kingside prospects, but more things could go wrong for McShane - and eventually they did. His last move before making the time control (40.Kh2) was an error, and Radjabov managed to capitalize.
Radjabov was the only one of the first day's four winners to double up in round 2. Alexander Morozevich came close, however. His choice of the rare 11.Rc1 against Magnus Carlsen clearly took the Norwegian by surprise, and he immediately erred with 11...Nd7. One thing he may have overlooked was that after 12.Ne2 he couldn't play 12...Qxa2 (a capture that's generally common in this variation) on account of 13.Kd1!! Carlsen managed to escape - if "escape" is really the word - into a very bad endgame where White (Morozevich) had doubled rooks on the 7th rank while most of Black's remaining pieces were on or very near their home squares.
Carlsen defended extremely well, but Morozevich was playing practically perfect chess for a long time. His 31.Re8 looked rather strange though - maybe he miscalculated something. After that Black got some breathing room, and then with 33...d4!? managed to activate his remaining pieces at the cost of a pawn. White could have kept some advantage with 40.Kxc4, not fearing 40...Rc8+ 41.Kb3 Rxc2 42.Kxc2 Kc6 on account of 43.Kd3! Kb5 44.Ke4! Kxa5 45.Kd5! Carlsen would have had to play something like 40...Rg5 instead, maintaining good drawing chances but maybe not yet a sure half a point. 40.Rxc4 was a clear mistake, but fortunately for Morozevich not a serious enough error to cost him the game - though it was close.
Alexander Grischuk was another of yesterday's winners, but he was crushed on the black side of a Classical King's Indian, Bayonet Attack, by some superb preparation by Vladimir Kramnik. 13.Bg2 was either new or at least newish, and the plan with 19.Qa4 and 20.Rd1 put Black under all sorts of pressure. Grischuk used almost all his time trying to find a way out, but couldn't, and after Kramnik's deadly switchback 29.Qd1! Grischuk resigned with four seconds left on his clock.
The other two games were drawn: Evgeny Tomashevsky was happy to get an easy draw with White against Levon Aronian, while Hikaru Nakamura tried with Black to draw blood from a stone against Fabiano Caruana. The game went 107 moves and almost seven hours, but while he did force Caruana to make some precise decisions at a few crucial moments Nakamura was never really close to a win.
So Radjabov has two points while Aronian, Kramnik and Morozevich are just half a point behind. Carlsen has a point, and it's far from inconceivable that he could have had a bagel on the scoreboard instead. His opening play has been very shaky so far, but after that he has done very well to keep the practical pressure on his opponents. If he starts coming out of his openings in decent shape, he'll surely be a big factor, and soon.
Round 3 Pairings: