Gibraltar 2018, Round 1: Lots of Upsets
I'm probably going to spend more time enjoying Gibraltar than blogging about it, but I thought I'd take the time to mention that the tournament started today/yesterday (Tuesday) and wasn't filled with the usual super-GM beatdowns on the talented amateur ranks.
The upsets went all the way up to board 1. Top seed Levon Aronian (2797) was unable to beat Anita Gara (2350), and that wasn't even the only success in the Gara-land: a bit farther down (on board 17) Anita's sister Tricia pulled off a draw against Nigel Short (2681). (It looks like Tuesday was a good day for chess players with four-letter names starting with the letter "G"!)
Other upsets: Sharma Hemant drew with Pentala Harikrishna (2745) on board 5, Prithu Gupta drew on board 6 with Le Quang Liem (2737) (and unlike the other upsets mentioned so far, the lower-rated player had Black in this game), Peter Lombaers beat Ivan Cheparinov (2699) on board 13, and Gary Quillan obliterated Daniil Dubov (2694) on board 15.
You can replay the games, and (for now) rewatch the round 1 commentary, here.