While the online rapid & blitz games make for good drama, it's nice to see slow over-the-board chess return (at least when the players fight and there's a non-trivial percentage of decisive games). The depth of the game is so much greater at a classical time control, and while it's harder to win and to pose unsolvable opening surprises when the defender has two hours rather than 20 minutes (or less) on the clock, that greater level of difficulty makes won games all the more impressive and valuable.
The classical event in question is the Superbet Chess Classic in Bucharest, Romania, which started June 5 (the 45th anniversary of Paul Keres' passing, for those who remember the Estonian legend) and runs through the 14th. Ten players are participating in this nine round event, eight of whom are members of the absolute elite while two strong but comparatively lower-rated players represent the home country. Thus far, both of the Romanian players - Constantin Lupulescu and Bogdan-Daniel Deac - are performing very respectably. They are both on 50% after four rounds, and while a cynic could note that they're only half a point out of last place, it's simultaneously true that they're only half a point out of first. The oddity of the event is that of the five decisive games played thus far, four involve them, with each player both winning and losing a game.
All five games were drawn in round 1, and in round 2 there were two decisive games. Fabiano Caruana defeated Lupulescu's French with a nice near-novelty that led to a speedy win, while Deac survived a difficult position against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and managed to pull out a win.
In round 3, Lupulescu bounced back with a win over Anish Giri. The game was at first even, but an error by the Romanian gave Giri a promising kingside initiative. Giri didn't make the most of it, and the game remained even (or very slightly in Giri's favor) until a pair of errors on moves 31 and 32 allowed Lupulescu a mating attack. He took advantage and made it back to 50%.
In round 4, he was joined at 50% by Deac, coming from the opposite direction. He was ground down by Alexander Grischuk in an isolated d-pawn middlegame. Rather than suffering an endless siege of the pawn, Deac decided to pitch the pawn for some freedom and in the hopes of regaining it. The sac was probably correct, but he didn't manage to reclaim the material and went down in a long heavy piece ending. Meanwhile - and finally! - there was a decisive game not featuring the Romanians. Caruana was also dragged back down to an even score when he was impressively outplayed by Wesley So. So found a nice pawn sac that split Black's position into two non-isolated halves. On the kingside, Caruana's king was joined by a dreadful bishop and a marginally helpful knight; on the queenside his queen was stuck out of play, joined by a hapless knight. His position wasn't yet lost, but it was difficult; difficult enough that even the number two player in the world quickly fell apart.
The surprising upshot is that the two winners in round 4 are the two co-leaders of the tournament. So and Grischuk lead with +1 scores, Vachier-Lagrave and Giri share last with -1 scores, and in addition to Caruana and the Romanians the tie for 3rd-8th is also shared by Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Levon Aronian, and Teimour Radjabov.
All the games are here, with my comments to the decisive games. And here are the pairings for round 5: