The Week in Chess

14 year old Wei Yi caused the surprise of the first round of the FIDE World Cup so far by eliminating Ian Nepomniachtchi with a day 2 win with black. However it could be that the already very tall Chinese junior born 2nd June 1999 and who became a GM in February this year at 13 years 8 months may be just announcing he is set for the very top.

Elsewhere the sensational result of the round was Anna Ushenina's equalising win against Peter Svidler in his favourite Gruenfeld. Ushenina played some very deep preparation but it was a single move blunder from Svidler 28...Rxf2? (28...Bxf2+ should hold) overlooking 30.Qd7+ that settled the game. Ngoc Truong Son Nguyen eliminated Vladimir Akopian although they were not so very far apart ratings wise. Ray Robson looks like he is fast improving beating Andrei Volokitin. Not a sign of time trouble for him in the match. Daniil Dubov beat Sergey Fedorchuk.

The day was marked by very tough chess with many of the players set to go home anxious to show that they deserved to be here.

28 matches go to playoffs including well known players such as Alexander Morozevich (who won rather easily to level his match against Sambaev), Evgeny Tomashevsky, Michael Adams, Gawain Jones, Alexander Beliavsky, Gata Kamsky, Jon Ludvig Hammer, Sergei Movsesian, Alexei Shirov, Hou Yifan, Peter Svidler, Viktor Bologan, Teimour Radjabov, Aleksey Dreev, Dmitry Andreikin and Baadur Jovava (beaten by Martyn Kravtsiv on day 2).

Those who came close to joining them were Larry Christiansen who had Laurent Fressinet all ends up with black but transposed the move order of the winning continuation and could only draw and Judit Polgar who missed at least two wins against Isan Ortiz Suarez and Rahman Ziaur who played wonderfully against Boris Gelfand but just couldn't finally bring home the full point.

The leading players who had the easiest draws mostly progressed including Levon Aronian, Fabiano Caruana, Vladimir Kramnik, Alexander Grischuk (pushed hard for a time by Bjelobrk on day 2), Sergey Karjakin, Hikaru Nakamura, Boris Gelfand, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Leinier Dominguez, Ruslan Ponomariov (who admitted that he had never won a round 1 match 2-0), Wang Hao, Peter Leko, Nikita Vitiugov, Anish Giri, Vassily Ivanchuk, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, David Navara and Etienne Bacrot.

Already settled Round 2 pairings: Aronian- Lysyj, Mamedyarov-Matlakov, Le Quang Liem-Vallejo, Jakovenko-Eljanov, Malakhov-Fressinet, Gelfand-Filippov, Bacrot-Moiseenko, Dominguez-Onischuk, Vachier-Lagrave-Suarez, Ivanchuk-Robson, Ponomariov-Dubov.