Today's round of the Grenke Chess Classic had much more blood than yesterday's. Magnus Carlsen led the way once again, and won his second straight game in the tournament and fifth overall, grinding out a victory over Francisco Vallejo Pons. He didn't have much to work with and the ending should have been drawn, objectively speaking. But as Carlsen has shown time and time again, "should" doesn't matter. The opponent has to prove the draw, and Vallejo didn't manage it. It's a great start for Carlsen, who achieved his 2-0 score with the black pieces. Tomorrow he'll finally get White, against Viswanathan Anand.
Speaking of Anand, he also won, defeating local prodigy Vincent Keymer. It was a smooth win with White for the former champ, and now the tournament will not only put Keymer's strength to the test, but his resilience as well.
The third winner on the day was Peter Svidler, who outplayed Arkadij Naiditsch with Black with what looked like surprising ease.
The other two games were drawn. Fabiano Caruana played an unusual anti-Sicilian against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave obtaining an interesting and perhaps slightly advantageous position in the queenless middlegame that quickly ensued. Caruana had what fun there was to be had before the game was eventually drawn. Meanwhile, Georg Meier had the more comfortable position on the white side of a short draw against Levon Aronian.
The games are here (without notes - it's Easter!), and these are the pairings for round 3, tomorrow: