Chinese smoked out!

The chinese pair Li Chao and Wang Yue arrived a couple of minutes late for their second rapid games and were summarily defaulted. Apparently they were in the smoking room and lost track of time. Neither of them were able to rebound from such an unfortunate twist of fate.

Li Chao then lost his third rapid game against Gashimov, and Wang Yue to Bacrot and that was that as far as they were concerned. It's always hard to cope with such a tough blow, but rules are rules. The Chinese must have had high hopes of getting at least one player into the next round but all four of their players were eliminated at this stage.

Many amateurs are perhaps unfamiliar with the new FIDE rule which has applied in major tournaments since the Dresden Olympiad. It goes something like the following: 'A player must be present and sitting at the board when the round begins'.

Even if this seems severe, if we compare it with other sports, serious professional players just aren't late!

Some of the other matches were quickly decided in the rapids with only three of the four games being necessary in four of the encounters: Karjakin demolished Navara, and Malakhov did the same to Eljanov. Top seed Boris Gelfand brushed aside Judit Polgar and, slightly surprisingly, Laznicka did the same to Victor Bologan. Jakovenko overcame Areshchenko by winning the first and fourth rapid games whereas Caruana beat Alekseev by winning just one game and drawing the rest.

So two matches required blitz games to decide, Grischuk winning both Blitz games versus Jobava.

Peter Svidler won the last rapid game to equalize the match before winning the Blitz games against Naiditsch.

Not for the frist time in this competition has Svidler come back from the brink!

The pairings for the 4th round are the following:

Name	Country	Rating	Age	versus	Name	Country	Rating	Age
Gelfand	ISR	2758	41	v.	Vachier_Lagrave	FRA	2718	19
Mamedyarov	AZE	2719	24	v.	Laznicka	CZE	2637	21
Vitiugov	RUS	2694	22	v.	Karjakin	UKR	2723	19
Gashimov	AZE	2758	23	v.	Caruana	ITA	2652	17
Ponomariov	UKR	2739	26	v.	Bacrot	FRA	2700	26
Svidler	RUS	2754	33	v.	Shirov	ESP	2719	37
So	PHI	2640	16	v.	Malakhov	RUS	2706	29
Jakovenko	RUS	2736	26	v.	Grischuk	RUS	2736	26

We notice that 12 of the last sixteen are rated 2700 and above and that chess at the highest levels is definitely a young person's game!