The first round was repeated; only the names were changed to protect the innocent. Once again there were two blowout wins, a draw that should have had a decisive result, and a well-played draw. Four players share the lead, while second seed Ding Liren is alone in last with the same number of points he had at the start of the tournament.
About Ding: his round 2 game with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave was a complete disaster. Poor preparation, serious positional errors, and very little resistance. This is not the real Ding Liren - so far he's not even a shadow of his usual self. Hopefully he can turn it around, and if he comes up short it will be because his best wasn't good enough, and not because he was only able to produce his worst chess.
The other victory was also one-sided. Fabiano Caruana played 1.d4 and met Kirill Alekseenko's Nimzo-Indian with 4.f3. His 13.d6 was a critical decision. It seems that Black can equalize after this, but that doesn't mean that it's easy to solve it at the board. Alekseenko replied incorrectly, and after that Caruana was all over him, finishing things off with a crushing kingside attack.
Wang Hao was very close to taking the clear lead with 2/2 - and saddling Anish Giri with 0/2. He played a very good game, won a pawn, and achieved a technically won position at the end of the first time control. Giri defended very well, though, and bit by bit the advantage dissipated.
Finally, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Alexander Grischuk contested the Berlin ending, and Nepo's novelty on move 17 failed to bear fruit. Grischuk made a comfortable draw.
Here are the games, with my notes, and in the morning we'll see what the chase pack can do with white against the leaders: