I’m having a tough time in Struga so I don’t feel like writing about it right now, but there was one instructive moment in my game from round 3. I was white against Nikolovski:

34 Qd5! Rd5 35 Rc1

This position arose as a sequence of some forced play and I already had this exchange planned (besides, taking on a6 gives black counterplay) because I remembered a game by Smyslov where he won a similar rook endgame. After the game I went through his Letopis shakhmatnogo tvorchestva (his best games collection in Russian) and found it:

Smyslov-Bednarski,1966

White won convincingly in both games.

On the other side of the globe, in Saint Louis things heated up right from the start. No time to go through the games, but Caruana continues to impress! After several hiccups when approaching 2800 earlier in his career, now he’s confidently marching up towards Carlsen’s stratospheric rating, who continues with his irrational style and weird openings.

And one more thing I noticed: after not qualifying, but still playing the Candidates, thanks to Kramnik’s win in the World Cup, Karjakin seems to like it when things come to him without him moving a finger. Some people really quickly get used to things coming to them as gifts. He said he won’t decline his chance to play the world championship match if Carlsen refuses to play in Sochi and will prepare hard for Anand! He even went that far to compare his situation to Karpov’s in 1975 when Fischer refused to play. He probably has some gaps in knowledge of history because Karpov actually qualified to play Fischer by beating everybody else in matches. And of course, the inevitable mention of his sponsor and his goal of bringing the crown back to Russia, blablabla… Can please somebody tell this guy to shut up?