Alireza Firouzja, Evgenij Najer, and Alexei Shirov continue to lead the FIDE Grand Swiss after six rounds of 11, but they have been joined by two more players. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave butchered Pavel Ponkratov, while Krishnan Sasikiran overcame Alexandr Predke with Black to make it a five-way tie at 4.5/6. Another 15 players are just half a point back, including Fabiano Caruana, so obviously nothing has been decided at this point.
A few words about some of the games. Firouzja had some winning chances against Shirov, but Mr. Fire on Board's aggressive counterattack saved the day - barely. Najer was definitely winning against Caruana, who may have been taking too many chances in the hopes of defeating a significantly lower-rated opponent. It very nearly cost him the game; indeed, even at the end, when Najer allowed/blundered into a three-time repetition, Caruana's position was probably lost. As already noted above, MVL won in brutal fashion against Ponkratov; all three games mentioned in this paragraph are given, with my comments, here - as are three other games, included on account of some nice tactical points.
Here are the round 7 pairings for the top 10 boards:
1. Firouzja (4.5) - Najer (4.5)
2. Sasikiran (4.5) - Vachier-Lagrave (4.5)
3. Esipenko (4) - Shirov (4.5)
4. Caruana (4) - Sevian (4)
5. Anton (4) - Dubov (4)
6. Yu (4) - Deac (4)
7. Navara (4) - Sarana (4)
8. Petrosyan (4) - Korobov (4)
9. Sargissian (4) - Sarin (4)
10. Tari (4) - Sjugirov (4)