Gibraltar Rd1: Only one surprise

Opening Ceremony

Lela Javakhishvili and Bela Khotenashvili from Georgia

Hikaru Nakamura and his fiancee Mariagrazia De Rosa are both participating in the event

While the ceremony was happening, some players preferred to warm up!

Ivan Cheparinov heading an important analysis session. With wine, of course.

Veselin Topalov's team: Silvio Danaliov, the man himself, and Ivan Cheparinov

Anna comes back to her tournament!

Odin Blikra Vea, Tania Sachdev, Lawrence Trent

And they say chess players are not social creatures...

Miss Gibraltar, Shyanne Azzopardi, was there to help with the opening ceremony.
She is a teaching assistant and zumba instructor as well.

Topalov drew the White king, so all odd number players will have white in the first round

Shyanne Azzopardi and Hou Yifan, fresh from Wijk aan Zee

Can't pass the opportunity for a picture, after all

Round One

Round one under way

As usual, most of the top players took the full point in the first round. There were, however, some interesting moments.

Nakamura's opening was unusual to say the least:
he moved his queen six times in the first eight moves!

And why did he do it?

It's likely that Jovana Vojinovic had good chances for an advantage in this game,
but it proved to be too complicated for her

Hou Yifan also saw herself in a little bit of a complicated position, but her opponent duly collapsed under time pressure:

The only major surprise at the top boards was Alexander Motylev's loss on board 16. He was simply outplayed by Badrakh Galmandakh from Mongolia.

Sunil Weeramantry is a famous coach in the US and Nakamura's stepdad

Tereza Olsarova started with a loss against the much higher rated Nikita Vitiugov

Yu Yangyi will face GM Shyam Sundar tomorrow

Round Two Pairings

Tomorrow's round promises to be very interesting - some of the highlights include of course the top boards with Debashis vs. Topalov and Nakamura vs. Dronavalli, but of special note is board 12. Wei Yi, the prodigy, will be facing... the World u-16 Champion! Alan Pichot, from Argentina, has been making strides in his chess and it will be interesting to see how he does against clearly the World's #1 u-16 player.

Replay Masters games

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All photos by Sophie Triay from the Official Website

Links Official tournament site The games will be 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 13 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.