Mark Twain famously wrote, "the rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated", and Viswanathan Anand could say the same. Given up for dead - again - in the wake of his poor performance in Gibraltar a week or two ago, he has shown - again - that he remains a top player, and must be considered a legitimate contender to win the Candidates' tournament in March.
Anand won both games today, crushing Levon Aronian with White in the opener and defeating Anish Giri with Black in round 2. All the other games in both rounds were drawn except for the round two matchup between Alexei Shirov and Hikaru Nakamura. Shirov's attempt to create his trademark "fire on board" backfired (pun intended); in particular, his exchange sac on move 36 was a lemon or involved a serious miscalculation (possibly in serious time trouble). Both 36.a5 and 36.Rh1 - two moves which avoid going a pawn down - sufficed to maintain equality. I'll draw your attention to one other game from round 2: Vladimir Kramnik's wild battle with Levon Aronian. Kramnik played the dynamic, sacrificial chess characteristic of his play the past several years, and while it wasn't good enough for a win the game was highly entertaining.
There was an "undercard" of sorts: a two-game match between Boris Gelfand and Alexander Morozevich. Gelfand drew the first game with Black and won the second with White. Afterwards he played a second exhibition, this time a single game with chess sponsor (and very strong amateur) Oleg Skvortsov. Gelfand had White and Skvortsov was busted early, but the latter managed to make a very exciting game of it. The game had a nice touch near the end, when Gelfand played 42.Bc1! It wasn't the only winning move in the position, but it was certainly the prettiest.
All the games are here, and I've annotated Anand-Aronian from round 1.