Shenzhen Masters, Round 2: The winners lose

Anish Giri and Arjun Erigaisi were the two winners of the opening round of the highly competitive 5th Shenzhen Masters. Giri defeated Vladislav Artemiev and Erigaisi Xiangyu Xu. In the second round, however, this very small winning streak came to an end.

Anish Giri lost to Daniil Dubov and Erigaisi, who for a day was India's new number one in live ratings after his first round win - he had 0.5 rating points more than Anand - lost to Bu Xiangzhi.

In his game against Dubov Giri tried the Grünfeld and the two grandmasters then entered a theoretical duel in the Modern Exchange Variation with 8.Bb5. Both players had already gained experience in this line, in which White gives up a pawn for the initiative, and the first new move came with 19.Kf2. Dubov then gave up another pawn and went for an uncompromising attack on the king's side. With success.

Bu Xianghzi

In his game against Arjun Erigaisi, Bu Xianghzi defended with the Russian Defence, following an idea from Caruana. After a few skirmishes, Bu was able to bring a pawn to b2, which ultimately decided the game in his favour.

Vladislav Artemiev won against Ma Qun. The 33-year-old Chinese grandmaster is not particularly well known, but still has a rating of 2651. In 2014, he won the Asian Team Championship with the Chinese team, and also won gold for the best individual performance on board 4.

And the fourth game of this round was also decided. Yu Yangyi played with Black against Xu Xiangyu and had to defend against the Spanish Exchange Variation. According to classical theory, White has an advantage in the endgame due to his pawn majority on the kingside. This was not the case in this game, partly because White lost his extra pawn on the kingside. Yu won the game in the endgame.

After two rounds Dubov, Bu and Yu share the lead with 1.5/2 each.

Results

Table

Games