Saturday, November 28, 2009

World Cup R2: Three super-GMs knocked out

ChessBase.com

That would be fourth seed Alexander Morozevich, who lost 0-2 to Czech GM Viktor Laznicka; fifth seed Teimour Radjabov, who went down against Konstantin Sakaev, and Vassily Ivanchuk, who was eliminated by 16-year-old Wesley So. Top seed Boris Gelfand had a narrow scrape against Farrukh Amonatov, and Peter Svidler equalised against Tomi Nyback.

Once again we hand over, for starters, to our eloquent colleagues in the Khanty-Mansiysk press room:

The result of the classical games of the Round two is as follows: there are 16 clear participants for the 1/8 finals of the Cup. Three super grandmasters are out from the further fight. They lost in the first games of the Round two and could not balance in the second day. The Russian Alexander Morozevich lost to Czech Viktor Laznicka 2-0. The Ukrainian Vasily Ivanchuk could not cope with the young Wesley So of the Philippines. Teimur Rajabov lost to the experienced Russian Konstantin Sakaev.

Only the fivefold Russian Champion Peter Svidler managed to balance the situation by beating Tomy Nyback – they will meet in the tiebreaks. The same goes for the last year finalist Alexey Shirov, who could not make it easy, and lost to the Ukrainian Sergey Fedorchuk in the second game. We should also mention the resolute victory in both games of the following pairs: Shakhriyak Mamedyarov over Vadim Milov of ISR, Chinese Wang Yue over the Russian Boris Savchenko, Dmitry Jakovenko over Indian Sandipan Chanda.

On Thursday there will be 16 tiebreaks. So far the participants of the Cup did not express their disapproval of the format. They consider it fairer; sudden death could only theoretically decide the fate of a match.


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