The first day of the second round of the 2015 World Cup featured some really terrific games; a good thing, too, as an early spate of short draws initially threatened to turn the day into a dud. Getting the draws out of the way, Sergei Zhigalko and Ilia Smirin drew with Veselin Topalov and Teimour Radjabov in 11 and 12 moves, respectively. If they had the black pieces that would be one thing, but it was very surprising to see them give away their white games against their elite opponents. But then I was even more surprised to see the higher-rated player give away draws with White as well. Hikaru Nakamura and Peter Svidler each drew in just 18 moves with White, against Sam Shankland and Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu, while Anish Giri split the point against Alexander Motylev in just 17 moves. There were five more games that were drawn in fewer than 30 moves, so boooooo.
But all told, that's still just 10 games out of 32, and 22 good games are more than enough to maintain the spectators' interest. Some highlights:
"U-S-A! U-S-A!": Nakamura and Shankland played to a quick draw, as noted above, but the other three Americans all won their games. Fabiano Caruana won with Black against Rauf Mamedov, Wesley So ground out a win - also with Black - against Csaba Balogh, and in a serious upset Alexander Onischuk defeated Sergey Karjakin, albeit with White. There's still at least one more game to be played, but for the moment chances look great for three and maybe four players for the United States to reach the third round, which may be their best ever performance in the World Cup and the knockout world championships. After decades of early exits by U.S. players not named "Gata Kamsky", I'm going to enjoy seeing the American players succeed.
Successful Favorites: Among the biggest stars not already mentioned, winners include Vladimir Kramnik (who managed to finally trick Lazaro Bruzon in the rook and bishop vs. rook ending), Ding Liren (who won with a nice kingside attack against Ernesto Inarkiev), Radoslaw Wojtaszek (who defeated Russian prodigy Vladislav Artemiev), Vassily Ivanchuk (who won with Black against Maxim Rodshtein), and Chinese super-prodigy Wei Yi beat Yuri Vovk.
Unsuccessful Favorites: Wang Hao was butchered by his countryman Shanglei Lu, David Navara lost to Azeri player Gadir Guseinov, and Mickey Adams lost to Viktor Laznicka.
In all, 15 of the 32 games had a winner, so while there will probably be some tepid draws tomorrow, at least 15 players will have to fight hard for their tournament lives.