We’re at the half in the Grand Slam Masters. Vassily Ivanchuk took a bit of a fall back to earth in the final game of the 1st half as Magnus Carlsen won a nice game with the French Defence (a bit of a rarity for him). Totals after 5 rounds are Ivanchuk 10 (3-1-1), Nakamura 7 (1-0-4), Aronian, Anand, Carlsen 6, and Vallejo-Pons 3. Play resumes in Bilbao on Thursday.St Petersburg, ranked 4th at the outset, won the European World Cup which ended on Sunday. This is another victory for Peter Svidler who held down 1st board, although he probably isn’t personally happy with his 50% score. Some of the top individual scorers are listed below (only those who played opponents with an average rating of 2500 or better): Vitiugov (St Peterburg) 2835, Radjabov (SOCAR) 3019, Bartel (Novy Bor) 2844, Tomashevsky (Ekonomist) 2837, Nepomniachtchi (Ekonomist) 2808, Eljanov (Ekonomist) 2821, Riazantsev (SHSM) 2963, Bacrot (Baden Baden) 2827, Jakovenko (Ugra) 2821 and Areschenko (Tomsk) 2876