The Daily Update: Poikovsky and Saratov

The Karpov tournament in Poikovsky finished with some more short draws, but also a couple of wins, one of which was very important for the final standings. Etienne Bacrot defeated Zahar Efimenko - with Black, no less - and caught up with Sergey Karjakin to tie for first place. (I wonder if they used tiebreaks to separate them: maybe fewest moves per draw would be fitting for this event.) Both players wound up on +2: two wins and seven draws, to be precise.

Meanwhile, Alexander Morozevich keeps putting on a show in the Governor's Cup in Saratov. After four straight wins he was finally held to a second draw today by Alexei Shirov, but just barely. Their game was incredibly sharp and flashy, and certainly worth your having a look. With 5/6 (TPR: 2980) Morozevich leads Peter Leko, Evgeny Alekseev and Evgeny Tomashevsky by a point and a half (and everyone else there by even more).

World Cup 2011: Round 2, Day 2

Today was an especially good day for Etienne Bacrot, Francisco Vallejo Pons, and Ruben Felgaer as they each bounced back from losses on day 1 of the second round (to Anton Filippov, Lazaro Bruzon Batista, and Yaroslav Zherebukh respectively) 2 to win today and force tiebreaks. For Vallejo it must have been especially sweet, given his spectacular collapse in the first game. (Ironically, in this game too he wound up a pawn in a rook and knight ending, but this time the normal result came to pass.)

All of the other day 1 winners maintained or increased their lead. There were two 2-0 winners: Alexander Morozevich (over Alexandr Fier) and, most notably, Vladimir Potkin, who won again over Alexei Shirov. As for day 2 winners not already mentioned, that group consists of Gata Kamsky (over Rustam Kasimdzhanov - good news for U.S. fans), David Navara (over Alexander Onischuk - bad news for U.S. fans), Abhijeet Gupta (over Sam Shankland - still more bad news for the U.S. contingent), Baadur Jobava (over Radoslaw Wojtaszek - more bad news for Anand's seconds [see Kamsky-Kasimdzhanov, above]), Fabiano Caruana ([send him back!] over Yuri Drozdovskij), Zahar Efimenko (over Ferenc Berkes) and last but not least, Judit Polgar over Sergei Movsesian.

Here are the tiebreak matches we'll get to enjoy tomorrow (the higher-rated player is listed first):

• Karjakin - So
• Mamedyarov - Fridman
• Grischuk - Feller
• Ponomariov - Ni Hua
• Svidler - Nguyen
• Vallejo - Bruzon
• Vachier-Lagrave - Bu Xiangzhi
• Lysyj - Ivanov
• Moiseenko - Inarkiev
• Adams - Nielsen
• Nepomniachtchi - Riazantsev
• Bacrot - Filippov
• Zherebukh - Felgaer

After tomorrow, we'll be down to the final 32.

Links: Official site (with excellent live video coverage, still available in scrollable replay) here; Wikipedia brackets here. No annotated games from me today, but among the interesting action I'd commend readers to have a look at the entertaining Shirov-Potkin game and the nice finishing attack by Polgar against Movsesian.