GM Ronen Har-Zvi video recap 

Standings Pos. Points Player Rating 1-3 1.5 Magnus Carlsen 2851     Vladimir Kramnik 2801     Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 2788 4-7 1.0 Anish Giri 2790     Levon Aronian 2784     Veselin Topalov 2754     Li Chao 2755 8-10 0.5 Pavel Eljanov 2765     Pentala Harikrishna 2763     Nils Grandelius 2649

After a great start, with three decisive results in round 1, today only one game was decisive. But what a game! The strong Frenchman Maxime Vachier-Lagrave won his encounter with Anish Giri of the Netherlands, swapping places with him in the standings. Maxime now sports a monstrous rating in the live list: 2792.5! Giri lost a game after an impressive streak without a single defeat since November 2015. The game was really exciting; a Sicilian Najdorf that MVL mastered in an almost old-fashioned way, with tactics and brilliant play all over the board.

Carlsen drew Topalov comfortably with black, and is now 37 games straight without a loss.

Grandelius and Aronian split the point after and interesting Berlin defense. Kramnik tried to complicate his game against Li Chao, but the strong Chinese GM was a able to hold the draw.

Now the trio in the lead is Magnus Carlsen, Vladimir Kramnik and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. Tomorrow Round 3 at 10AM EDT - 16 CEST. Live commentary in ICC with IM Christof Sielecki and GM Lars Bo Hansen.

Today's winner of the GTR contest is Fork. Well done!

The winner of the GOTD TRIVIA contest for Round 1 is MagPet. Congratulations!