Carlsen On Perfect 3/3 As Favorites Drop Around Him

14 players are on a perfect score after three rounds in the Grenke Chess Freestyle Open. On a day of upsets, several pre-tournament favorites lost: GM Aravindh Chithambaram (against GM Maciej Klekowski), GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (against Slovak IM Juraj Druska, the only IM on a perfect score), GM Fabiano Caruana (against GM Etienne Bacrot), GM Ian Nepomniachtchi (against GM Leon Luke Mendonca), and GM Wesley So (against local hero GM Dmitrij Kollars).

GM Magnus Carlsen remains on a perfect score, but only after defeating GM Nils Grandelius from an inferior position in our Game of the Day.

Round four will be on Saturday, April 19, starting at 4:00 a.m. ET / 10:00 CEST / 1:30 p.m. IST, followed by round five on the same day at 10:00 a.m. ET / 16:00 CEST / 7:30 p.m. IST.

After three rounds, Carlsen is the only player from the world's top-20 who is on a perfect score.

Standings After Round 3

• Round 2: Aravindh, Vachier-Lagrave Lose; Caruana Barely Survives
• Round 3: More Upsets—Nepomniachtchi, Caruana Go Down; Carlsen Gets Away

Round 2: Aravindh, Vachier-Lagrave Lose; Caruana Barely Survives

Round two was already much more challenging for the top boards than the first. Aravindh lost, while Arjun and GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov were held to draws. Caruana barely survived against IM Bibisara Assaubayeva and won after a fateful blunder by the two-time women's world blitz champion.

The first big upset of the tournament isn't included in the graphic above. Druska outplayed Vachier-Lagrave in a heavy-piece endgame. The French grandmaster was eternally worse, with weak central pawns and one on b6, but the plan of 30...Kd7? was the decisive mistake because in a few moves it allowed an aesthetic breakthrough: 

Druska would next defeat GM Karthikeyan Murali in round three to stay on a perfect 3/3 score.

Klekowski took down Aravindh in artistic fashion with a double rook sacrifice. 

Caruana was as close as one could be to meeting the same fate; however, he not only survived but got the full point. Assaubayeva was in the "prevent counterplay and clean up" phase of the game when, with six seconds on the clock, she played the game-losing 56.Nf5??. An absolute heartbreaker, as instead 56.Rf6! (the only winning move) would have prevented Caruana's only source of counterplay, the f-pawn.

Speaking of great escapes, GM Cem Kaan Gokerkan got away against GM Arjun Erigaisi. Aaron Nimzovich wrote, "the threat is stronger than the execution," and it was a case in point in this game. 17.Qxe7 was the way to win, but Arjun naturally grabbed a pawn with check before playing that—a mistake! A few moves later, after 19...Rc1!, commentator GM Peter Leko called it: "the position of the day and perhaps the tournament!"

Koelle's draw against Mamedyarov was just rock-solid, a nearly perfect game with no mistake by either side. In a rook endgame, Mamedyarov had to force a draw by threefold repetition. Other notable upsets from round two were GM Alexander Grischuk losing against IM Marco Dobrikov and GM Ray Robson's loss against IM Benedict Krause.

There would be plenty more action in the day's second round, with bigger guys falling.

Round 3: Caruana, Nepomniachtchi, So Suffer Upsets; Carlsen Gets Away

At the start of round three, Leko said that the chance of Carlsen, Caruana, Nepomniachtchi, and So all losing in the same round was zero percent. So we nearly saw the impossible, except that Carlsen got away.

Round three featured position number nine.

The Swedish number-one put great pressure against Carlsen and played just about perfectly until his clock got low. As Leko pointed out toward the end, you can play dozens of perfect moves, but it takes just one to lose a game. Carlsen first managed to equalize before tricking his opponent with 30.Rh1 Ng6? (an attempt by Black to repeat moves) and the winning 31.Qf5!. 

GM Rafael Leitao analyzes the Game of the Day below.

Caruana's fortune, after the miracle against Assaubayeva, reversed in the day's second game. This time, he lost a position that he had been winning, though it wasn't a one-move blunder by any means. Caruana outplayed GM Etienne Bacrot brilliantly, starting with 13.Nd6!, with the "quiet" idea of 13...Bxf1 14.Qe5. But with a few inaccuracies, Caruana's pieces ended up overextended, and Bacrot won the endgame.

After Nepomniachtchi castled queenside, he never had a chance against Mendonca. The spotless conversion looks deceptively easy.

Meanwhile, German GM Kollars defeated So on home soil, squeezing out an advantageous endgame with the black pieces.

GM Javokhir Sindarov may not be in the top 20, but he is one player to watch out for. Earlier this year at the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Weissenhaus, he joined as a last-minute replacement for GM Viswanathan Anand. He then defied all expectations when he defeated Caruana and Nakamura back to back, losing to only Carlsen.

He's currently on 3/3, in the leading pack, but he explained that in some ways an open tournament can be more difficult than a closed one:

Here, if you want to play in high boards, you need to win 3/3. But, in Weissenhaus, you can play a draw. Here you need to play with everyone for a win.

Meanwhile, there are still 51 players on a perfect 3/3 in the regular open tournament. Players are still permitted to hop from that tournament over to the Freestyle Chess one before round five, so we will see if there are any takers on Saturday.

Below you can see the pairings for round four of the Freestyle Chess event.

Round 4 Pairings | Top 10

(See all pairings here.)

How to watch?

The Grenke Freestyle Chess Open is a classical tournament in the Freestyle Chess (Chess960) format that determines one of the 12 participants of the Freestyle Chess Grand Slam Tour event taking place in New York. The event takes place alongside a regular classical tournament, the Grenke Chess Open. The Freestyle Chess event is a nine-round Swiss with a time control of 90+30 for the entire game, with a prize fund of €225,000 and the chance to win Freestyle Grand Slam Tour points.

Previous coverage:

• Round 1: No Surprises: Carlsen, Arjun, Caruana Start With Wins