The number of people with a full house dramatically decreased in the 3rd round. Already there were some GM clashes in the 3rd round….clashes that took a lot more rounds to appear before the accelerated pairings were tried this year and last year. Two Armenians, Movsesian and Hovhannisyan lept into the lead with nice wins against fellow GM’s while young Indian Prihtu Gupta impressed with a nice attacking win against French GM Maxime Lagarde. This was definately the game of the round!
Aasef Alashtar from France and Soren Sandmann Petersen from the United State round up the group on 3 out of 3 but they are in the lower group of the accelerated pairings and have taken advantage of weaker pairings as a result. Both have nontheless managed to defeat much higher rated opponents but both face a tough pairing in the 4th round!
The 3rd round featured many interesting games. Local FM Sigurbjorn Bjornsson played a good game and slayed the chinese dragon employed by GM Nikola Djukic
FM Sigurbjorn with a good win and a good day, scoring 1.5 out of 2 vs GM opposition.
A big group of players follows on 2.5 out of 3 whitle top seed Gawain Jones sits back with work to do on 2 out of 3 after being held to a draw by IM Gudmundur Kjartansson’s resilient defence.
The tournament continues tomorrow when the 4th round will be played at 15:00 local time
Live commentary starts 2 minutes into the round every team and is on Twitch.tv/fionchetta, embedded on Chess24 and on the tournaments homepage.
Replay round 2 broadcast here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/408617154
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