The third round of the World Cup in Tromsø saw two shocking results as both top seed Levon Aronian and 2011 finalist Alexander Grischuk started with a loss. Aronian went down with the white pieces against Evgeny Tomashevsky, who played the Stonewall and won an ending with opposite-coloured bishops & rooks. Grischuk lost with black to Le Quang Liem, who decided a Grünfeld in a pawn ending. Hikaru Nakamura, Boris Gelfand, Gata Kamsky, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Peter Svidler and Anish Giri were the other winners of the day.