Anand followed the advice of the (good) old Soviet school and made a draw after two losses. Actually the advice was to make a draw after the first loss, but better late than never. Topalov didn’t seem to mind, he played solid chess and the draw was rather uneventful.

Carlsen won a second game in a row against the big-mouthed Frenchman (Vachier). I’m sure he would have wanted a “stupid draw” against the World Champion, but those don’t come easy. He was close though, as Carlsen gave him some chances, the most obvious one being on move 25 when he could have got rid of the only white pawn on the queenside.

The other decisive game was So-Grischuk. It appeared that black won’t have problems drawing, but somehow he createad them himself. Plus the unavoidable time-trouble. A smooth game by So, who seemingly didn’t do much, but he played more precise than his opponent and took advantage of Grischuk’s mistakes.

The brave player to finally allow a Grunfeld was Nakamura in his game against Caruana. But it was black who introduced a novelty and got a great position. Perhaps they fear the Grunfeld for a reason? At one point black seemed to get the better chances, but in time-trouble Caruana decided to take the draw by transposing to a drawn endgame a pawn down. Like Anand, he remembered (or most probably was told by his coach and former Soviet player Chuchelov) the Soviet advice of drawing after losing.

Aronian and Giri drew in the English. More Grunfeld fear as Aronian went for 1 c4 and didn’t get much, except for a playable position, which is probably what he wanted in the first place. It seemed he was getting somewhere when he managed to double Giri’s f-pawns but then sent his rook to c4 and black consolidated. Analysis shows that it wasn’t easy to create something anyway.