The first round was a great one. Three of the four games had a winner, and the only draw was the longest game of the round.
The first game to finish was Michael Adams' win over David Howell, a fine attacking effort by the British #1. As mentioned in the preview post, Adams was one of the world's absolute best players for many years, not long ago, and should not be overlooked as a contender here.
Adams' win might have been the game of the round - certainly for British fans - except that the second game saw Luke McShane upset world #1 (maybe now ex-#1) Magnus Carlsen in impressive style, outplaying him on the white side of an English. This was a funny twist on last year's event, when Carlsen played the English against Vladimir Kramnik, winning the game and eventually the tournament. McShane was aware of this, but of course didn't choose his opening just for the sake of the joke.
Speaking of Kramnik, he won with Black against Nigel Short. As is his wont, Short found a very unusual opening idea for Kramnik: 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nf6 3.Qe2!? The game remained tensely balanced for a while, but when Short failed to realize that a turning point was coming, he lost the opportunity to cool off the play and came under a decisive attack. Ironically, the attack bore some resemblance to how things can go in a Sveshnikov Sicilian, an opening that used to be a Kramnik staple.
Finally, Viswanathan Anand pressed for a long time against Hikaru Nakamura's Berlin Wall, but he couldn't quite knock it over.
Standings After Round 1:
1-3. Kramnik, Adams, McShane 3 (They're using Bilbao 3-1-0 scoring.)
4-5. Nakamura, Anand 1
6-8. Carlsen, Howell, Short 0
Round 2 Pairings:
Kramnik - Nakamura
Howell - Anand
Carlsen - Adams
Short - McShane