Not only “you know who” - who had to work fairly hard to avoid a loss to Sam Shankland - but Christopher Yoo. (Two others as well, but I want my pun, doggone it.) Losing in round 1 to Hans Niemann didn’t help, obviously, but it didn’t prove much of an impediment to the 15-year-old. He bounced back in round 2 with his win over Wesley So, and now in round 3 he won a nice game against Elshan Moradiabadi. He did make one mistake in a very complicated position, but the error was instantly “forgiven” and from there he won in good style.
There were two other victories on the day, including the first win by one of the super-GMs. Fabiano Caruana defeated Dariusz Swiercz in a very messy game in which, as Tartakower used to say, Caruana made the next-to-last mistake. It wasn’t a good game, but a bad win and a good win count the same on the crosstable. Moreover, as I expect most if not all of us have noticed in our own chess lives, success breeds success, and there’s a tendency to play better after a win. So let’s put this generalization to the test, and see if Caruana starts playing better. It has been a bad year for him, and it would be good to see him turn things around and work his way back towards the top of the rating list. Meanwhile, he joins Yoo, Niemann, and Sam Sevian in a tie for first.
The day’s other winner was Awonder Liang, who defeated Aleksandr Lenderman. Lenderman equalized with Black, but that was only the start of the battle. Lenderman’s 20…e5 worked out poorly after 21.dxe5 Bb4 22.e6. White wound up with a 4-2 kingside majority, and Lenderman’s attempts to complicate hastened his demise.
In other games, Shankland had the upper hand against Niemann, as mentioned above, but was unable to convert his advantage. Sevian had a winning advantage against Levon Aronian, but was too cautious in how he tried to convert it. He needed to risk playing d5-d6 at some point, preventing Black from setting up a fortress. Finally, Leinier Dominguez vs. Ray Robson and Jeffery Xiong vs. Wesley So were very clean draws.
The games, with my notes to the decisive games, are here. These are the pairings for round 4:
Aronian (1.5) - Robson (1.5)
Swiercz (1) - Dominguez (1.5)
Niemann (2) - Caruana (2)
So (1) - Shankland (1.5)
Moradiabadi (1) - Xiong (1.5)
Lenderman (1) - Yoo (2)
Sevian (2) - Liang (1.5)