Grischuk made it over 2800 on the live list today after beating Gelfand with black. His 3/3 finish in Baku must have been a wonderful stimulus to continue the rout – now he’s 5/5 in the last 5 games he’s played! One more win and we’ll be comparing him to Fischer, two more – to Caruana.

In a Grunfeld he went for the best method against the same line Gelfand used to almost beat Vachier in Tashkent. In Tashkent the Frenchman suffered from amnesia and couldn’t recall who Botvinnik was, so he ended up lost (even though he saved the game) while in Moscow Grischuk followed Carlsen, who re-introduced the Be6 idea back in 2009. After losing 3 games in a row against Gelfand, Grischuk finally gets his revenge.

Kramnik also won today and again Inarkiev didn’t get out of the opening. It’s tough to start with two blacks in a row in such a company, but I really expected more from Inarkiev’s team – they should have prepared him better for this tournament. Tomorrow he’s white against Gelfand, so I bet he’ll score his first half a point.

The other two games were drawn. Morozevich had an advantage against Aronian, then it was a dead draw, then he blundered, but Aronian missed his chance so finally a draw. A typical Morozevich game. Ding Liren couldn’t do anything against Leko. But not many people can anyway.