The grand show that is the 2013 World Cup moves on to the third round tomorrow, and several leading stars won't be moving with it. The biggest names, Levon Aronian, Vladimir Kramnik and Sergey Karjakin, safely made it through today's tiebreaks, as did second-tier favorites like Gata Kamsky, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Peter Svidler. But other major stars like Ruslan Ponomariov, Wang Hao and Michael Adams were all bounced from the competition, losing to Daniil Dubov (in the Armageddon game!), Alexey Dreev and Yuriy Kryvoruchko, respectively.
Wang Hao was dominated by Dreev, and was fortunate to survive the classical stage of the match, but for the other two favorites it must be a bit of a shock. Adams has been a fearsome competitor in knockout events, twice coming within a hair of winning when these were FIDE World Championships, and with his fantastic recent result in Dortmund he had every right to be hopeful. He missed a win in the second classical game, and had good chances in the first g/25 today. The second g/25 was his Waterloo, and Kryvoruchko outplayed him in a rook ending to take the match.
As for Ponomariov, Dubov employed what Vladimir Kramnik dubbed the "Grischuk strategy": drawing all the games as quickly possible, even with White, to try one's chances in the faster time controls. Dubov took it to an extreme, not trying even with White in the final 5' + 3" game, happy to wait for the Armageddon game. Ponomariov drew the black pieces for that game, which meant that Dubov had to play for a win - no draw would be acceptable here. (The rules for the Armageddon game are that White gets 5 minutes, Black 4 minutes + draw odds, with a three second increment only from move 61.) Ponomariov seemed to be doing well, setting up a nice blockade, but when the key challenge came with 25.f4 he erred. 25...exf4 was alright, but only if he met 26.Qc3 with 26...Re5 27.f4 Na4. Clearly missing that last move, he played 26...f6, and it was all one-way traffic from then on. Only the clock could stop Dubov, and it didn't.
Some round 3 pairings:
Aronian - Tomashevsky: The top seed must finally face a 2700.
Nakamura - Adhiban: On paper a mismatch for the American, but the 21-year-old Indian didn't get here by being weak.
Kamksy - Hammer: The last Norwegian participant is an underdog, but maybe not a big one after wins against Movsesian and Navara.
Mamedyarov - Wei Yi: A tough pairing for the 14-year-old, who is surprisingly the last remaining Chinese player in the event. He has been a revelation already; if he wins this match a new encomium will be necessary.
Svidler - Radjabov: Thanks to Radjabov's plunge this year starting with the Candidates, his rating is considerably lower than normal. As a result, we have our first pairing of the super-elite already in round 3.