As yesterday, so today: 12 of the 32 games played in the World Cup finished with a winner. Of these, only three were repeat winners: Vassily Ivanchuk, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, and Anish Giri. And only two came back from a loss yesterday to even the match: Baadur Jobava, who beat Anton Korobov, and most notably Aleksandr Shimanov, who won a blunder-filled King's Gambit to level the scores with Gata Kamsky. That means that 17 matches are over, and 15 will continue with tiebreaks tomorrow.
Of today's winners I'll note just one, the 14-year-old Chinese GM Wei Yi. After defeating Ian Nepomniachtchi in round 1, today he knocked out the very strong and experienced Alexei Shirov. Wei's rating coming into the tournament was "only" 2557, but when he was being interviewed after the match Wang Hao (rated 2752) commented that Wei was something really special and already playing at a 2700 level. It seems so! He'll next fact the winner of the match between Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Maxim Matlakov.
More surprising perhaps than who has advanced is the list of players needing playoffs. That includes Levon Aronian, Vladimir Kramnik, Sergey Karjakin, Kamsky, Mamedyarov, Ruslan Ponomariov, Wang Hao, Peter Svidler and Michael Adams - some real superstars. It would be a pity to see the top players knocked out so early, but it's a lot of fun for us as spectators to see these guys having to play rapid and possibly blitz chess.
The U.S. roundup: Hikaru Nakamura held off Eltaj Safarli in a good, tough game to advance to the third round; he'll play Baskaran Adhiban, who defeated Alexandr Fier in a mild upset. (No more fear/Fier jokes this tournament.) Kamsky's crazy game with Shimanov was already mentioned, so he's playing tiebreaks. If he gets through that he'll play the winner of the tiebreak between David Navara and Jon Ludwig Hammer, Norway's sole remaining participant. Alexander Onischuk played very strangely today, offering Leinier Dominguez a draw on move 21 that amounted to tournament suicide. He didn't have anything in the position, but is the risk of losing four rating points so terrible that he should give up the match? (No.) The right way was Ray Robson's. He had Black against Vassily Ivanchuk in a must-win situation, and took some real risks. Ultimately he lost the game, but he forced Ivanchuk to play very well, and managed to create some real complications that ran Chuky short on time. You're not guaranteed to win if you get into the fight, but if you avoid a fight you're guaranteed not to win.
Finally then, here are a couple of games. The first is the topsy-turvy Shimanov-Kamsky game, featuring that phoenix known as the King's Gambit. Second, Nikita Vitiugov's win over Markus Ragger, featuring a super-aggressive attacking idea straight out of the opening. Enjoy.