Armenia‘s Levon Aronian and India’s Viswanathan Anand won their games and caught Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France in first spot of the Sinquefield Cup.
The Armenian grandmaster beat Hikaru Nakamura of the United States to take the leader’s position and become world’s number 2.
The fifth Sinquefield Cup will see two final rounds and possibly a playoff on Saturday, August 12.
Anand, Aronian and MVL are in the lead (with the former and the latter facing each other on Thursday), and Carlsen is only half a point behind them.