This is the first round in this World Cup in which none of the day 1 losers managed to equalize the scores in day 2. In fact - though I'm not going to bother looking this up (but you're more than welcome to!) - I wouldn't be surprised if in most of the previous World Cups there was at least one player who lost on day 1 who managed to strike back in the next game. Here, however, neither S. P. Sethuraman (against Shakhriyar Mamedyarov), Anton Kovalyov (against Fabiano Caruana), Yu Yangyi (against Sergey Karjakin) nor even the erstwhile world #2 Alexander Grischuk (against Pavel Eljanov) managed to make it to the tiebreaks. The first three players drew their games, while Grischuk even lost the second game to Eljanov to finish with a bagel. (In fact, Grischuk went through the whole competition without a win in classical chess or even in a 25' + 10" game.) Yu Yangyi could also have finished this round with a second zero, but he was given a mercy draw by Karjakin.
So those four players were eliminated, and in this, the round of 32, another five players were shown the door. One Chinese player (Yu Yangyi) may be gone, but two others have punched their ticket to the next round, where they will play each other. Wei Yi defeated Alexander Areshchenko on the white side of a Poisoned Pawn Najdorf, while Ding Liren defeated one of the locals, Gadir Guseinov, in a Chebanenko Slav that turned sharp.
The next pair of winners will also face off in round 4. Anish Giri defeated Peter Leko, and did so in the sort of technical style that would have made Leko proud in his salad days. He'll play Radoslaw Wojtaszek, who defeated Julio Granda Zuniga with a nice kingside attack in a Queen's Gambit Declined, of all things.
The final winner on the day was Dmitry Jakovenko, who eliminated Vassily Ivanchuk. Jakovenko will go from one Ukranian to another, facing Eljanov in the next round. (Incidentally, Eljanov has gone 6-0 so far in the tournament!) Caruana and Mamedyarov, whose wins were already mentioned, are the final known pairing for round 4, and of all the players who qualified for the next round it is only the identity of Karjakin's opponent that remains unknown (except that it will be either Vladimir Kramnik or Dmitry Andreikin).
Here's what's on tap for tomorrow's (or today's) tiebreaks:
That's a lot of big names on the bubble, and that includes many of the underdogs as well. It should be very exciting, especially if it lives up to the adventures we saw in the round 2 tiebreaks.