Magnus Carlsen is the new leader at the 74th Tata Steel Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee, The Netherlands. The Norwegian defeated Levon Aronian on Monday. Other victories in the A group went to Sergey Karjakin and Teimour Radjabov, who won against Anish Giri and David Navara respectively. Pentala Harikrishna and Maxim Turov maintained their lead in the B and C groups.

Carlsen won the important game between the two highest rated participants

A bit surprisingly, the press room was very quiet on this first week day of the tournament. Some journalists, who had visited the tournament in the first weekend, were already gone - will they return later? Others - in fact most - probably decided to come by during the second half, when everything will be decided. And so, on the day when world number one Magnus Carlsen faced tournament leader Levon Aronian, almost nobody noticed, well, at least not in Wijk aan Zee! (By the way, this is also the reason why there hasn't been one of those famous press-conferences-with-demo-board yet.)

But of course, everyone noticed. Obviously, everyone is following the games at the official website. Kudos to the organizers for picking up something that was done before by the Russian Chess Federation: Pascal Pflaum's applet for streaming the live games. The German programmer created this splendid applet for the Schachbundesliga two years ago, and at some point started licensing his software to other organizations. It was already used during e.g. last year's FIDE World Cup, and on the website WhyChess (which saw its funding terminated recently).

And so the tens of thousands of chess fans enjoyed online yet another great game by Magnus Carlsen, who slowly outplayed Levon Aronian, then let a big advantage almost slip away but eventually won a BN vs R (and only a few pawns) ending.

I was completely winning of course, then I tried to find the most accurate way and evidently I didn't. Probably it was winning til the end, but if so it was only by luck. A win is a win.

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As Jan Timman explained to us last week during our interview, one of the few weakness left in Anish Giri's play is that he can be overoptimistic. It looks like this was the case also in the third round, when the Dutchman couldn't resist the anti-positional 20...f5, a move condemned by his opponent Sergey Karjakin after the game. The Moscovite added:

Finally of course I'm happy. It was difficult to recover but I managed to play a more or less good game today. It wasn't an easy win. 

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The third winner of the day was Teimour Radjabov, who saw his opponent going wrong already in the opening. Just when David Navara seemed to be putting up a stubborn defence, the Czech dropped a full knight.

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In the B group local heros Erwin l'Ami, Jan Timman and Sergey Tiviakov won. Timman must have enjoyed the final part of his game against Ilya Nyzhnyk.

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Jan Timman still attracting lots of attention at the start of the round

The 250-euro Piet Zwart Prize was awarded to Lithuania’s Viktorija Cmylite for her victory against Holland’s Sipke Ernst.

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In the C-group this prize is just 100 euros, and in the third round two players had to split the money: Elisabeth Paehtz and Matthew Sadler. Their game, a Modern Defence, was indeed spectacular:

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Daily video by the organizers

Games group A, round 3

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group A | Pairings

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group A | Round 3 standings

Games group B, round 3

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group B | Pairings

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group B | Round 3 standings

Games group C, round 3

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group C | Pairings

Tata Steel 2012 | Grandmaster Group C | Round 3 standings

After the round, Veselin Topalov could be found in the bar of the venue, analyzing with his fresh new second, GM Romain Edouard from France