It was another exciting round, with three decisive games and not a single 1.e4 e5 snorefest.
The game of the round was a thriller between Veselin Topalov and Fabiano Caruana, an Advance French that went back and forth a few times before Caruana turned the tables one last time with the brilliant 36...Re8. It has been rumored that if he - Caruana - manages a +4 score in the tournament that he will overtake Magnus Carlsen for the #1 spot on the rating list. That seems wrong, but he would at least get very close to him on the list. Right now he is within 14 points, the nearest anyone has been to Carlsen in a very long time.
Another bit of big news on the rating list is that Wesley So has become the 12th player in history to achieve a FIDE rating of 2800, though for now it's only on the live list, where he is 2803.2. He defeated Mickey Adams to notch his second win of the tournament, and as a result he's in clear first. For Adams, it was his second straight defeat, and like yesterday he blundered at the end of the time control; a bit less egregiously in today's game, but not by much.
The third winner was Viswanathan Anand, who was unafraid of Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and his Najdorf. With some nice preparation Anand came out of the opening with a serious advantage, and while he may not have prosecuted this advantage in the best possible way MVL's position was always difficult, and a blunder on move 29 sealed his fate.
Anish Giri and Hikaru Nakamura played past the first time control, but it never looked too frightening for Black and a draw was always the likeliest result. Vladimir Kramnik and Levon Aronian also drew, but theirs was a wild affair before it settled down to a drawn ending.
The games are here, and tomorrow's pairings look like this: