Rise and Shine

When I was younger someone told me that you can be more productive if you wake at 4:30am and work for 3 hours, than if you wait until 9:30 pm and then start working. Having spent last night (between 11pm and midnight) staring at a keyboard trying to write something for this blog, I tend to agree.
However the notion of doing *anything* before 1pm is an anathema to most chess players, especially early morning games. Most of the big overseas tournaments I've been to seemed geared towards the 'late start, late finish' schedule, with players happily sacrificing a reasonable dinner time so they don't have to eat breakfast at a reasonable time (Just about every Olympiad I've been to starts with breakfast scheduled from 7:30am to 9:00 am, only to have it extended to 11:00 am by the start of round 2).
So I did not blog last night before I went bed. The benefit of this is that I can at least write something about the Grand Slam Masters final that isn't 18 hours out of date. Having a quick look at the live games, I see that Vallejo Pons, who started with 2 losses has beaten Carlsen in the third round. I've only had a quick look at the game but Vallejo had to defend for a lot of the middlegame, but then was a piece up, which was enough to then win. You can play through the game (for now) from the tournament livegames site.