World Cup 2011: Round 1, Day 2: Leko, Wang Yue Eliminated

Most of the favorites continued smoothly along, qualifying for round 2 on Wednesday. Most, but not all! The two big upset victims from day 1, Peter Leko and Wang Yue, were unable to take revenge today against Sam Shankland and Alexandr Fier, respectively. Wang Yue did have his chances, but Fier escaped with a draw to advance. As for Leko, he tried to mix things up with the Modern Benoni, but was outplayed and wound up the recipient of a charity draw in a lost position.

Another noteworthy upset victim was Gata Kamsky. Diego Di Berardino ground him down, but fortunately for Kamsky that means playoffs tomorrow rather than his elimination. Another 2700 suffering a similar fate was Francisco Vallejo Pons, who lost today to the very young Peruvian GM Jorge Cori. They were almost joined by Michael Adams, who got into enormous trouble with White against Mark Paragua, but Adams held on to draw in over 100 moves, and thus won his match.

No Americans have been knocked out so far: Shankland, Alexander Ivanov (by forfeit over Wang Hao) and Alexander Onischuk (1.5-.5 over Ivan Ivansevic) advanced; Kamsky, Ray Robson (two draws vs. Etienne Bacrot) and Yuri Shulman (two draws with Vladimir Potkin) are headed for playoffs.

Viorel Iordacescu lost today, so he's off to playoffs as well.

Now for some links. The event website is here, and those with the time and opportunity should check out their live coverage, complete with lots of high-def webcams, commentary in both Russian and English, post-game interviews and even, on occasion, some winners demonstrating their games. Better still, you can watch it even now - just click the play button (the video is near the top of the linked page).

TWIC has good coverage, and you can see the report on today's games here.

The clearest bracket can be found on the event's Wikipedia page (scroll down).

Finally, my own contribution today: a couple of games I found of interest, here.