The Week in Chess

The FIDE World Cup in Tromso started with a fascinating day's play. 12 of the top 15 seeds won. It's very hard to cover 63 games at one time but in general at the top the gap in rating was too large but further down the draw as the players became closer in strength the games became more competitive.

Levon Aronian played the only untitled player in the field Mikhail Markov and was probably somewhat outplayed in the opening, Aronian, who is a hero to Markov simply outclassed him from this moment to win.

So favourites Aronian, Caruana, Kramnik, Grischuk, Karjakin, Nakamura, Gelfand, Mamedyarov, Leinier Dominguez (completely busted against Essam El Gindy before turning round to a win), Ponomariov and Svidler (who admitted to some apprehension ("panic") in playing the women's world champion in the first round and he had to work hard for his win) and Peter Leko all won in the first round.

The biggest shock was Alexander Morozevich's loss to Batur Sambuev whose exchange sacrifice initially didn't seem sufficient but brought a time trouble blunder from Morozevich at first time control after which he won easily.

Chinese players Qi Liu (draw Wang Hao), Yiping Lou (draw Gata Kamsky), Yunguo Wan (draw Michael Adams) all had good results.

Junior Chinese player Yi Wei drew with Ian Nepomniachtchi. Polish junior Jan-Krzysztof Duda drew easily with black against Vassily Ivanchuk and Russian up and coming talent Daniil Dubov beat Sergey Fedorchuk. US hope Ray Robson avoided his usual time trouble and beat Sergey Volokitin.

Local Norwegian players Jon Ludvig Hammer drew against Sergei Movsesian and Simen Agdestein was crushed by Etienne Bacrot. Judit Polgar lost to Isan Reynaldo Ortiz Suarez and Teimour Radjabov was held by Jorge Cori both return games should be interesting to keep an eye out for on day 2.

There was early controversy over the security procedures to prevent electronic cheating with the players being searched thoroughly but being allowed to mix with unsearched spectators. I suspect that's going to be hard to find a completely satisfactory solution to until the player numbers reduce in a week.

I'm assuming that Jakovenko beat Paragua not the reported other way round.