So far, the man of the tournament is Fabiano Caruana, who is now 2-0 - 6-0 on the tournament's scoring. (3 points for a classical win, 1.5 points for a draw in classical followed by an Armageddon win, 1 point for a classical draw and not succeeding in Armageddon, and 0 for a loss in classical.) He was pressing against Jan-Krzysztof Duda from early on, and after Duda's 23...b6? he enjoyed a winning advantage. It took him a very long time to convert, and Duda had a couple of subtle chances to hold, but for the most part it was a fine performance by the world's #2, who was the deserved winner.
Levon Aronian bounced back from yesterday's Armageddon loss to the world champion, defeating Aryan Tari on the white side of a Marshall. He grabbed the pawn, and when Tari failed to maintain his kingside bind Aronian suddenly enjoyed an overwhelming advantage that he smoothly converted.
The match between Magnus Carlsen and Alireza Firouzja was anything but smooth. Carlsen was outplaying Firouzja in the classical game, but slipped up. Firouzja found some nice tricks to save the game, and it was on to Armageddon. There Firouzja had an overwhelming advantage with Black, and even caught up on time (White starts the Armageddon with 10 minutes, Black with seven). But then he started to crack up, and even lost on time in what was still a drawn position (but he had been clearly winning earlier). He was clearly struggling with his nerves, reminiscent of his tragic loss to Carlsen in last year's World Blitz Championship. It was a very lucky escape by Carlsen, notwithstanding the truth of the dictum that good players are always lucky.
Caruana thus leads with a 6-0 score, two points ahead of Aronian and Firouzja, both of whom won the classical game in one round while losing the Armageddon game to Carlsen in the other. Carlsen's two Armageddon wins leave him with 3 points, and Tari and Duda are still waiting to get on the scoreboard.
Today's games, with my brief notes, are here. Here are the round 3 pairings: