Ni Hua, Kamsky, Robson Leave World Cup After Round 1

Ni Hua, Gata Kamsky and Ray Robson are among the players who have to leave the FIDE World Cup in Baku after just one round. The favorites are through without needing a tiebreak.

All photos courtesy of FIDE.

After two days of play, 40 of the 64 matches are already decided and 24 ended in 1-1. That means we'll see 48 players in the playing hall on Sunday for a tiebreak.

It also means that 40 players are through, and their 40 opponents have experienced the shortest possible World Cup. A trip to Baku, two games of chess, and you can go home.

Well, at least they made the net amount of $4,800. And some of them might stay to assist friends and become their seconds — that's quite common at World Cups.

The first two days haven't seen huge surprises yet. The six rating favorites (Veselin Topalov, Hikaru Nakamura, Fabiano Caruana, Anish Giri, Wesley So and Vladimir Kramnik) all went through without needing the tiebreak and except for Giri they all scored 2-0.

Other big names that went through: Levon Aronian, Sergey Karjakin, 2011 winner Peter Svidler, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Vassily Ivanchuk and Wei Yi. See the full results of days 1-2 at the end of this report.

Top seed Topalov cruised to the second round, and even got to show his old trademark, the exchange sacrifice. In this case the positional compensation was so obvious that more people would have played it!

Nakamura's opponent Richmond Phiri (2252) of Zambia made mistakes early in the opening and lost without a fight. Their game from the first round was more interesting but also there the American won without problems:

After the round Nakamura posted on Facebook:

Giri had played the longest game on Friday, but couldn't get through Arthur Ssegwanyi's defense. The latter played another excellent game on Saturday, but made a strategic mistake just before the time control, trading his rooks for the queen:

Smooth. #FIDEWorldCup

— Anish Giri (@anishgiri) September 12, 2015

Kramnik nicely outplayed Deysi Cori from an Accelarated Dragon (reached via transposition) and, like his colleague Topalov, finished off with an exchange sac that few strong players would have hesitated on:

Seventh seeded Alexander Grischuk is the strongest player who hasn't reached the second round yet. IM Yusup Atabayev of Turkmenistan can pat himself on the back for holding the super GM to a draw twice! IM Ilia Iljiushenkok managed the same against Dmitry Jakovenko.

After losing the first game, Ding Liren's opponent IM Tomas Krnan of Canada was happy to agree repeat moves and draw as early as move 18. He might have started his Baku sightseeing the same day.

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov did the same, and agreed to a draw
on move 16 already against Pouya Idani of Iran.

Mamedyarov, asked who he would prefer to play of Leitao and Hou, said "I would prefer to play the loser, but that's not going to happen!"

— Ian Rogers (@GMIanRogers) September 12, 2015

Evgeny Tomashevsky needs to play the tiebreak, and so does Boris Gelfand. The Israeli #1 drew a Sveshnikov as Black against Chilean Champion Cristobal Henriquez. Their first round game ended in a draw even though White was winning in the final position:

Update: For some reason Gelfand's last move 73.Qb5 wasn't registered by the DGT board. Because he noticed the strong move 73...Qe4 he offered a draw, accepted by his opponent who was playing on increment. Gelfand had about a minute left.

The #1 female player Hou Yifan drew twice with Rafael Leitao of Brazil. Women's World Champion Mariya Muzychuk is already out: after an easy draw in game one, she was doing well again the next day but eventually got outplayed by Mickey Adams.

Sam Sevian also drew his second game with Teimour Radjabov, so they're heading to the tiebreak as well. Leinier Dominguez suffered a surprising loss, but survived the match at the skin of his teeth:

Alexander Moiseenko of Ukraine was another player who desperately needed a win. He did so in great style! The 2013 European Champion played a great attacking game against Lu Shanglei of China:

For two American players the World Cup is already over: 2007 winner Gata Kamsky and Ray Robson. They can hardly complain as their respective opponents, Hrant Melkumyan and Yuri Vovk, aren't weak players.

The only 2700 GM who got ousted by Sandro Mareco of Argentina and almost-2700 Igor Kovalenko goes home after losing 0.5-1.5 to Wen Yang of China.

We finish the report with the encounter between two players from South-America. Peruvian legend Julio Granda, who eliminated Hrant Melkumyan, Peter Leko and Anish Giri two years ago, knocked out Alexander Fier of Brazil. Here's the game annotated by GM Dejan Bojkov:

The second round will see two matches with players from the same federation: Hikaru Nakamura will play Samuel Shankland and Pentala Harikrishna faces fellow Indian S.P. Sethuraman. But first we'll have the round 1 tiebreaks on Sunday!

2015 World Cup | Round 1 Results

A tiebreak starts with two rapid games (25 minutes plus 10 second increment), if necessary two more (10 minutes plus 10 seconds), if necessary two blitz games (five minutes plus two seconds). If the score is still even, a sudden-death game follows with five minutes for White, four minutes for Black, a three-second increment from move 61, with Black having draw odds.