All photos by David Llada

Sopiko saw her good fortune from game one swing back to Natalia Buksa in game two

Chief Arbiter Anastasia Sorokina in a good mood. It seems that the initial stress is completely gone!

After being back in her element, Nana Dzagnidze showed another poor performance against Olega Zimina and was completely outplayed on the white side of the English opening. However, once more Nana’s colossal experience came handy and she managed to trick her opponent with a somewhat hard-to-see piece sacrifice. In a must win situation, Zimina declined making a draw and succumbed to White’s attack along the g-file. A great 2-0 victory for Nana but things could have been very different if Zimina had not run out of steam.

Ju Wenjun was almost winning but a draw was good enough for her to advance to the second round

After an overly-optimistic opening, Zhu Chen might easily have ended up 0-2 against Ju Wenjun but Ju Wenjun did not play accurately and all of her advantage was gone once Zhu Chen managed to get her king to safety. Nevertheless, the Women world No.2 showed her class and demonstrated a consistent performance to secure an easy draw to advance to the next round.

After a loss with the white pieces, Anastasia Bodnaruk had to go all in against Olga Girya. Unfortunately, her endeavors did not pay off and Girya got a very solid position out of the opening, after which, she gradually managed to grind down Bodnaruk and advance to the third round.

In a lot of even matches, like Pia Cramling vs Elizabeth Paehtz (above), the players showed consistent and cautious play and saved their nerves for the black-hole of energy, tie-breaks!

However, Aleksandra Goryachkina had a different approach and after her winning chance fizzled out against Vietnamese Pham Thanh Nguyen, she lost her objectivity and nerve, and went down at the hands of Pham, who is the dark horse and surprise of the event by reaching the Top 16.

Goryachkina - Pham

This was not the only bad news for Russians, Valentina Gunina, a world class player and a world class rapid player, succumbed to Ni Shiqun for the second time to leave the event earlier than expected.

As we mentioned earlier, many of the players who had lost their first matches, tried to complicate matters in the second game. This backfired in most cases, though Tan Zhongyi had a different approach today: She chose a well-known theoretical positon in the Slav with a clear plan for White. Afterwards, she kept her composure and executed White’s plan step by step and with a little help from Anna Ushenina, she managed to force a tie-break.

Tan Zhongyi vs A. Ushenina

Unlike Tan Zhongyi, Anastasia Savina did not manage to equalize and has to leave Tehran at the hands of...

...Chinese She Yang, who has demonstrated a consistent and solid performance so far.

I truly believe, in my humble opinion, that Tan’s approach is one of the best possible ones for tournaments with such a brutal formant: One should play chess in a consistent level, even if you level of play is not high, hold your nerve, and have faith… and a little bit of luck!

Finally, Kashilinskaya had Muzychuk over the ropes for the entire game but the Russian never managed to find a decisive cut through the game and Muzychuk survived with a bit of good fortune.

Kashlinskaya had Muzychuk on the ropes and almost scored but unfortunately for her, she ran out of steam and let Anna off the hookKashlinskaya - A. Muzychuk

Check out more games with master analysis by Soumya Swaminathan and Sagar Shah here.

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 14 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.