Levon Aronian scored his second win, beating Boris Gelfand in a modern Slav - his first ever victory against Boris! Levon’s home preparation. 17-year-old Magnus Carlsenfollowed Aronian’s footsteps with a second victory.

The Norwegian Wonderboy had a pleasant endgame advantage out of the opening and gradually improved the activity of his pieces (compare the positions after 19...Bxc3, 31.Rdd6 and finally 48.Kc6 The screws on Pavel Eljanov were slowly tightened and when Magnus collected pawns on move 51 and 52, the battle was over.

Teimour Radjabov keep former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik ‘in check’ with the black pieces. Vladimir thought he got out of the opening with a pleasant advantage, but couldn’t find a convincing continuation. After 25...Nd5 he realized Teimour had dealt with most issues and although he lost a pawn later on, had no difficulty achieving a draw.The game between Veselin Topalov and Vassily ended draw.At around the same time Viswanathan Anand and Shakhryar Mamedyarov had fought their way to a tie, too. Vishy had a better position all along, but with accurate defence Shaq kept his own. In the final position the advance of white’s passed pawns has been stopped short and they will soon be captured.

Van Wely came very close to his first win, but an inaccuracy allowed Polgar, to tie the game

The longest game of the day ended as it begun, with a slight edge for White, but not enough to win. Peter Leko tried hard to win a queen endgame with an extra pawn against Michael Adams. The Englishman didn’t blink for 98 moves, when all efforts came to an end.

Crosstable:

Live games