Jose Rafael Gascon consolidated his lead by beating Ryan Harper with the white pieces. Harper is a dangerous attacking player, but he has problems getting his game going with Black. Gascon played a Maroczy Bind in classical fashion, first restricting all active options of his opponent, before switching his attention to the kingside, to go after the black king. Gascon is now on 6 out of 7, a full point ahead of the rest of the field.

Katerina Nemcova also continues to impress, by keeping GM Sipke Ernst to a draw with Black. Ernst stuck to his non-theoretical approach in the opening, and just when he seemed close to getting an endgame edge, Nemcova played the key move 28...g5! to equalize the game. This leaves both of them on 5 out of 7, just like Szabo and Sukandar. The Romanian grandmaster had to work hard to achieve something tangible against Ariel Marichal. Once he got hold of a pawn, he converted patiently. The Indonesian IM used her superior pawn structure to squeeze the win in the endgame versus Orlando Husbands.

On board five, Damian Davy had an unfortunate handling of the opening and was lost as early as move eight against Huberto Pecorelli. Freestyling is a cool thing in chess, but it still requires a lot of theoretical knowledge to do so effectively. Viresh Giasi from Suriname fought very well against Edwin van Haastert, until he cracked on move 23 and allowed a fancy queen sacrifice. The best Surinamese players are now on 3 out of 7, so they still have every chance to reach 50%.