Today games of the 7th round were played. The most important games were of the leaders of the tournament Kasparov and Kramnik. Both of them played white. Kasparov played with Topalov. Kramnik with Bareev.

The world champion played the Spanish game. Kasparov had an advantage of the 2 bishops. For some time Topalov seemed to be in a very difficult situation. The result of that struggle was a draw.

At the second game between Kramnik and Bareev ,the Muscovite grandmaster played the Leningrad Variation of the Dutch Defence. Kramnik tried to attack but he failed. Both of them agreed to a draw. The only one effective game was between Gelfand and Short. The English grandmaster played a very rare opening variant. It is difficult to find that variation in the « Chess assistant» though the chess base has 570 thousands of difficult variations .

At the beginning Short was in a difficult situation but soon Gelfand made some mistakes . Short played Defence very well and he won.

The situation after the 7th round is the following :
Kasparov - 5 Kramnik - 5 Topalov - 3,5 Bareev - 3 Short - 2,5 Gelfand - 2