2021 Grand Swiss, Round 3

Round 3 was definitely Alireza Firouzja's day. Not only did he win, to become sole leader on 3 out of 3, but he extended his lead over the rest of the top seeds as he did so - Yangyi Yu of China is the only player in the rest of the top 30 to have even made it to 2½; he and Firouzja will play in round 4.

The top two seeds, Caruana and Aronian, both drew their round 3 games in contrasting ways. Caruana will have been frustrated that he didn't manage to bring home the full point against Saric in a game he was surely winning, whereas Aronian had a very tough defensive task against Demchenko, and needed to draw heavily on his technique to hold a pawn-down rook ending.

At the other end of the table, the tournament's only non-GM, IM Fy Antenaina Rakotomaharo of Madagascar, picked up his first points of the tournament with a draw against Georgiev.


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