Round 2 of FIDE World Cup Begins in Khanty-Mansiysk
It didn't go without surprises.
The first games of the Second Round of the FIDE World Cup were played on September 13 in Ugra Chess Academy.
Hikaru Nakamura's loss to Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu was one of the main headlines of the day. The grandmaster from Germany, playing Black, employed an interesting queen sacrifice and took the upper hand in a complicated game that followed.
Another unexpected result occurred in Wei Yi - AntonGuijarro: the Spanish grandmaster won as Black against a much higher rated opponent.
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Azerbaijan) won against Rustam Kasimdzhanov (Uzbekistan), Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (France) defeated Igor Kovalenko (Latvia), Nihal Sarin (India) convincingly outplayed Eltaj Safarli (Azerbaijan), Jan-Krzysztof Duda (Poland) was stronger than Tamir Nabaty (Israel), Evgeny Tomashevsky (Russia) won against Chithambaram Aravindh (India), Vladimir Fedoseev (Russia) lost to Pentala Harikrishna (India), Levon Aronian (Armenia) outplayed Parham Maghsoodloo (Iran), Vladislav Artemiev (Russia) defeated Ivan Cheparinov (Georgia), and Sergey Karjakin (Russia) outplayed Samuel Sevian (USA).
All other games were drawn: Abasov-Dominguez, Andreikin-Jumbayev, Sjugirov-Radjabov, Inarkiev-Xu Xiangyu, Demchenko-So, Huschenbeth-Vitiugov, Nepomniachtchi-Predke, Adhiban-Yu Yangyi, Jones-Jakovenko, Vidit-Rakhmanov, Grischuk-Bok, Ding Liren-Movsenian, Najer-Giri, Dubov-Firouzja, Matlakov-Gelfand, Wang Hao-Rodshtein, Svidler-Esipenko, Alekseenko-Christiansen, Korobov-Le Quang Liem, Xiong-Tabatabaei, and Yuffa-McShane.
The return games with the colours reversed will be played on September 14.
