Esipenko beats Bacrot and bounces back while Aronian leads Group C with a point ahead

Round 3 of the FIDE Grand Prix Series 2022 had 4 decisive games and  Nakamura, Wojtaszek, and Aronian being the sole leaders of their groups.

The day started with 1.e4 being the leading first move initiating 2 Sicilians, 2 Caro-Kanns, and 1 French. One of them was Esipenko against Bacrot which ended in favor of the Russian GM, who managed to bounce back from his loss against Nakamura yesterday.

The first decisive game of Round 3 though was Aronian-Keymer. Aronian managed to reach a paradisical position, cash out the point, and remain the sole leader of Group C with 2.5/3.

Another sole leader in his group is Nakamura with 2/3, after a draw against Grischuk. Their game started peacefully to reach a wild endgame and end in a draw. In their interview, Grischuk was calculating three lines in his head while Nakamura listened and admired! Later in his interview with WGM Dina Belenkaya, the American GM and streamer admitted that Ding Liren is the toughest opponent for Magnus.

An incredible game was Vidit-Dubov, with the Indian GM leaving all the Twitter drama around his name behind and fighting hard for this win. Their final position had a rook and a pawn against 5 pawns, which led Dubbov to resign.

Another fascinating game was So against Shirov. So grabbed a pawn in the opening and used his exceptional tactical skills in the middlegame to win the game. What was really amazing in this game was Shirov’s opening line, who introduced a new move in the Slav Defense.

The three remaining games ended in a draw with the Oparin-Rapport game “stealing” the show with their mutual queen promotion in the pawn endgame. Fedoseev-Wojtaszek ended in a draw as well after a sharp middlegame position and Dominguez-Harikrishna played a totally balanced Caro-Kann which gave them each half a point.

Join our live stream with GM Evgenij Miroshnichenko and WIM Jesse February and watch the games.