(Sorry for the delay, but I was playing in a local one-day tournament.)
We're closer to the start of the tiebreaks than to the end of the second day's games, but the update will proceed all the same! Let's get started.
Comebacks: Only four players bounced back from a loss yesterday to win today. The most notable victor was Leinier Dominguez, who was a pawn down in a rook and bishop ending against Federica Perez Ponsa; fortunately for Dominguez his opponent allowed his bishop to be trapped. Even after that the ending remained drawn for a long time, but Ponsa waited way too long to try to reach a rook vs. rook and bishop ending. If he knew how to defend it and felt comfortable doing so he could have saved the game, but to his misfortune (and serious financial detriment if he is eliminated in the tiebreaks) he didn't. Another big-name save saw Alexander Moiseenko slaughter Shanglei Lu in a fine attacking game; the other comebacks were Maxim Matlakov's win over Gadir Guseinov (sad news for the how team) and Milos Perunovic's win over Wang Hao - a definite upset.
Big Name Eliminations: Amongst the 2700s, the following are gone: Igor Kovalenko (2702 in the ratings used for seeding the players, but only 2699 at the start of the event; he was eliminated by Wen Yang), Ni Hua (bounced by Sandro Mareco), and...that seems to be it. A near- (and former) 2700 to go out was Gata Kamsky, who didn't manage to bounce back from yesterday's defeat to Hrant Melkumyan.
Big Names Going to Tiebreaks: The fact that few 2700s were eliminated in the first two days doesn't mean that the rest comfortably advanced; this was certainly not the case. While Anish Giri put away his resilient IM opponent on day two, neither Alexander Grischuk nor Boris Gelfand could defeat their IM opposition and they're headed to tiebreaks. Other 2700s headed for playoffs: Moiseenko (mentioned above), Wang Hao (mentioned above), Teimour Radjabov (vs. the young U.S. star Sam Sevian), David Navara (vs. Tamir Nabaty), Gelfand (mentioned above, facing Cristobal Henriquez Villagra), Nikita Vitiugov (vs. Samvel Ter-Sahakyan), Evgeny Tomashevsky (vs. Ziaur Rahman), Laurent Fressinet (vs. Ante Brkic), Ian Nepomniachtchi (vs. Zhao Jun), Dominguez (mentioned above), Grischuk (mentioned above, vs. Yusup Atabayev), and Dmitry Jakovenko (also vs. an IM, Ilia Iljiushenok).
In all, not just including 2700-rated players, there are 24 matches going to tiebreaks later today. The format is as follows: first, a pair of 25' + 10" games. If they finish with one player ahead, the match is over; if not, they move on to a pair of 10' + 10" games. If the players are split after that they move on to a couple of 5' + 3" games, and if that doesn't work it's on to an Armageddon game. White gets 5 minutes, Black 4 minutes plus draw odds, and there are 3-second increments after each move from move 61 on.
American Results: Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana and Wesley So all went 2-0 to advance, and Sam Shankland drew to advance with a 1.5-.5 match victory. Sam Sevian and Alexander Onischuk are headed for playoffs, while Gata Kamsky, Ray Robson and Varuzhan Akobian are (presumably) headed back to the United States. Robson had good chances to level his match with Yuri Vovk, but let him slip away. Another unfortunate note for U.S. fans is that at least one American player is guaranteed to lose in the second round, as Nakamura-Shankland is one of the matches on tap.
Miscellaneous: Mariya Muzychuk did very well to draw with Black against Mickey Adams in the first game of their match, and even had a chance for more against Adams today. She faltered in a tricky position, however, and her tournament is over. Hou Yifan, however, is still going - barely - after a second straight draw with Rafael Leitao. And finally, congrats to Alexander Ipatov, who defeated Ivan Cheparinov 1.5-.5 to advance to the second round. Ipatov was undoubtedly buoyed by a relatively recent draw with a comparatively little-known American player. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)