Round 3 in numbers

Put that next to round 2 and the field keeps tightening. Draws went up again, 80 to 87 in the Open and 47 to 63 in the Women's section. White's edge is shrinking: 56.3% two days ago, 53.0% now, and in the Women's section it is barely there at 51.2%. Blunders per game rose a little in both sections, which is what harder opponents do to you.

The checkmate gap held for a third day. 75 games in the Women's section ended with mate on the board, 18 in the Open. I'm going to stop calling it early.

Julia Lebel-Arias of Monaco was born in 1944. She is 82, and on Thursday she won her game. Replay

In the Open, John Rodgaard of the Faroe Islands, born 1955, sat down against Diego Saul Rodri Flores Quillas of Peru, born 2006. That's a 51-year gap, the biggest of the round, and Rodgaard was the oldest player in the section that day. He lost in 18 moves, which was also the quickest decisive game of the round. Three awards on one board, and all of them went the young man's way. Replay

The other end of the scale is busy too. Three ten-year-olds played in the Women's section, all born in 2016. All three lost, and at ten that is fine. Vedant Shetty of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, also ten, played again in the Open.

The Women's age gap was 43 years: Aluong Riak Thon Ajak of South Sudan, born 2000, against Mariane Biordi of San Marino, born 1957. Biordi won, and her queen visited 67 different squares on the way. Replay

Sanker Kim of Cambodia, rated 1583, beat Ali Ehsan Aryan of Iraq, rated 2163. A 580-point gap and an expected score of about 3%. Replay

The biggest grandmaster scalp went to FM Zayne-Eddine El Zein of Lebanon, 2291, who beat GM Dylan Isidro Berdayes Ason of Cuba, 2462. Berdayes Ason won an award himself on Wednesday for castling with check, so it has been an eventful week. Replay

In the Women's section, Sina Tadesse Negi of Ethiopia, 1447, beat WIM Anzel Laubscher of South Africa, 1817, 370 points above her. Replay

Kyrgyzstan beat Brazil 2½–1½ while giving up 281 rating points a board. The site calls that Slingshot. The Cayman Islands did the same to the Bahamas.

Abdul Rasheed Mariyam Laisa of the Maldives delivered checkmate on move 14, with the queen. The fastest mate of the round in either section. Replay

The Open's fastest was a rook mate on move 25 by William Davis of the Bahamas. Replay

At the other extreme, Ali Elier of Libya and Jaloliddin Ilkhomi of Tajikistan played 139 moves, 115 of them in the endgame, and drew. Elier won an award on Wednesday for the earliest queen trade of the round. He seems to like the endgame. Replay

Thamara Sagastegui of Aruba spent 62 minutes on 16...Bxe4. That's eleven minutes short of Wednesday's record, and still more than an hour on one move. Replay

Ilja Sirosh of Estonia went the other way. He played 52 moves with under five minutes on the clock, from move 32, got down to 31 seconds after move 37, and won. Replay

And GM Bardiya Daneshvar of Iran, 2572, lost on time to IM Elias Ruzhansky of Belgium after 57...Kd5. The clock doesn't check your title. Replay

Tupfah Khumnorkaew of Thailand promoted to a knight, with check: 66...a1=N+. She lost anyway, but it is the move of the round for me. Replay Claudine Bahati Mbebe of the DR Congo went for a rook, 60...d1=R+, and won. Replay

En passant was played 39 times across both sections. It was available and left alone 48 times. The award for leaving it is called Holy Hell, because en passant is forced. Allegedly.

Twelve games saw a third queen on the board. The Greek Gift, the bishop sacrifice on h7 or h2, was played ten times. Seventeen players pushed the f-pawn one square by move 10; the ones in the Open scored 55% from it, the ones in the Women's section 37%. Ben Finegold can have half of that.

Wesley So played at 99.3% accuracy, losing six centipawns a move on average, and beat GM Jesper Sondergaard Thybo of Denmark with it. Replay The cleanest game of the round was a draw between Thai Dai Van Nguyen of the Czech Republic and Vignir Vatnar Stefansson of Iceland: five centipawns lost between the two of them, over the whole game. Replay Fiorella Contreras Huaman of Peru managed three centipawns a move in the Women's section, in a draw with Khishigbaatar Bayasgalan of Mongolia, who did the same. Replay

Now the other kind of game. Nkwanyane Nolwazi of Eswatini was nine pawns up against Pema Yangsel Dorji of Bhutan, played 33.d5, and was suddenly getting mated in two. Dorji then missed the mate in one, and Nolwazi won. That is three awards from one game: the biggest blunder of the round, the biggest swindle, and the luckiest escape. Dorji also made 33 knight moves in it, the most of the day, so she gets something too. Replay

Anish Giri won the Carlsen Grind: nothing outside ±1.00 through move 40, then a win on move 76. Replay

Romania leads the Open on 6 match points and 11½ game points, ahead of France and Poland on 11, then China and Uzbekistan on 10½. In the Women's section Romania and the USA share the lead on 11½, with India, Israel, Poland, Uzbekistan and Vietnam on 11. Nobody has won every board yet.

There were 27 whitewashes in the Open and 34 in the Women's section. China beat Bulgaria 3½–½ against opposition averaging 2528, the best team performance of the round; Argentina did the same to Ukraine. Bermuda lost on board 1 to Saint Kitts and Nevis and still won 3–1.

Somalia and Zambia played the longest match, 326 moves over the four boards, 123 of them on board 4. Cameroon and Gabon were done in 97.

Lichess analyses every finished broadcast game on its own servers, and by the evening 99.5% of Open moves and 99.7% of Women's moves had an evaluation, so the accuracy and blunder numbers are Lichess's, not mine. Relay clocks are chaos, so the script looks for the jump where the 30-minute bonus actually lands instead of trusting move 40. Forfeits and unfinished games never count for move stats, ties are shown instead of broken, and every award links to the exact move.

New this round: the results are checked against chess-results, the official tables, every evening. The relay had three round-3 results wrong, two wins recorded as losses and a loss recorded as a draw, and in each case the last engine evaluation sided with the official table. They're corrected on the site, and rounds 1 and 2 agreed on every board. One game's moves stay out of the statistics because the relay stopped recording with White seven pawns up and the official result a loss; its result counts, its moves don't. Three wrong results in 778 games is a good evening.

Round 4 tomorrow, same treatment. Every round gets its own page, there are team standings with the official tie-breaks, and an overview of the whole event tracks the records as they fall. The site is unofficial and not affiliated with FIDE, the organisers or Lichess.

Got an idea for an award? Lichess comments and the r/chess round thread both reach me. One from the round 1 comments already made it in.

And thanks again to the Lichess broadcast team. Without the relay, none of this exists.