After today's round the leading group with perfect score has been reduced on two names, Inarkiev (RUS) who defeated Kožul (CRO) playing white and Meier (GER) who did the same against Gagunashvili (GEO) but playing black. Other three games on the top have ended peacefully.
In each open tournament with such a huge number of participants the standing after each round reminds me of bicycle race. Here too, we have two fugitives followed by one small group of 11 players and another much bigger of 53 players. In top 13 we find 6 Russians not surprisingly at all, 2 Greeks (!) a pleasant surprise indeed, one German, one Ukrainian, one Suede, one Roumanian and one Dutch player.
Today I found myself in an interesting situation. Exactly 23 years ago I played my first game against a world champion and it was Tigran (Vartanovich) Petrosian. The game ended in a draw. Imagine my surprise when I saw the pairings which gave me the opponent with the same name. When preparing the game I noticed in database that there are more players who carry that name. It seems that the chess fans in Armenia used to give their boys the name of the legendary champion. Today, unfortunately, I was not so successful.
Since I lost rather quickly, I had time to see what happened exactly in the game on board one. If You remember  Banikas (GRE) won against Akopian (ARM). I must say that I remained surprised how easily Greek GM scored this important victory. It seems to me that he was much better prepared for one of the main lines in Slav defense.

Tomorrow the most interesting game will be of course Meier (GER)-Inarkiev on board number one. Since both players belong to the group over 2600, it seems that the law and order will be soon established. Their clash will decide whether it will be one sole leader or they will be cached by a couple of persecutors.