Carlsen beats Gelfand to rejoin Aronian in Tata Steel lead after 7 rounds.

Magnus Carlsen defeated Boris Gelfand to rejoin Levon Aronian in the lead in the 74th Tata Steel tournament after 7 rounds.

Carlsen played for a minimal advantage and lost that before Gelfand missed an easy simplification for a draw and then was ground down. Another poor performance from him. Levon Aronian held Vassily Ivanchuk with black without any particular problems. Teimour Radjabov drew with Hikaru Nakamura to remain 3rd. Anish Giri escaped with a draw against Loek van Wely after being lost. Veselin Topalov's enterprising play promised an advantage but he went wrong and was ground down by Sergey Karjakin. David Navara's original play in the Berlin should have secured him the draw against Gata Kamsky but he went wrong before the first time control. Caruana had an advantage against Gashimov but a difficult game ended in a draw.

After the 7th round Aronian had a short interview with reporters.