World Cup 2.1: A great day for White

The FIDE World Cup is a knockout, starting with 128 players, with two games (90 min for 40 moves + 30 min for the rest, with 30 seconds increment) between pairs of players. The tiebreaks consist of two rapid games (25 min + 10 sec), then two accelerated games (10 min + 10 sec), and finally an Armageddon. The winner and the runner-up of the World Cup 2013 will qualify for the Candidates Tournament of the next World Championship cycle. The venue is the city of Tromsø, which lies in the northern-most region of Norway, almost 400 km inside the Arctic Circle. You can find all details and links to many ChessBase articles on Tromsø here. The World Cup starts on Sunday, August 11th and lasts until September 3rd (tiebreaks, closing ceremony). Each round lasts three days, while the final will consist of four classical games. Thursday August 29 is a free day. A detailed schedule can be found here.

Results of the second round first games

Many rating favorites were able to convert their white pieces, while the top players held with black. This is obvious in the top boards as there was a "zigzag" between draws and white wins. There were no big upsets this round, probably the biggest surprises were the young Chinese player Wei Yi holding Shirov to a draw with black, and Julio Grande of Peru beating Peter Leko.

Note that we have left out the "Title" column: all players without exception are grandmasters.

• All results and standings on the official site

This match is to many a big surprise. In the previous tiebreaks, Fier eliminated Wojtaszek (2701) and Adhiban eliminated Alekseev (2710)

Lysyj gave a comfortable draw to Aronian, and will now have to at least hold with the black pieces himself. In the back is the big clock that counts down to the infamous Zero Tolerance rule.

Though Tomashevsky, nicknamed "the professor", had to go to Armageddon with Ramirez yesterday, he had no problem dispatching Wesley So in a nice technical game

Nakamura showed why he is one of the top players in the World today and smoothly cruised to victory against Safarli Eltaj

Ray Robson went 2-0 against Volokitin, but his compatriot Ivanchuk took revenge with the black pieces in game one of round two

Kramnik was just too solid today for Kobalia, who tried long and hard to push a position in which nothing was really happening

The commentary duo of Susan Polgar and Lawrence Trent has kept the rounds accessible to every level of player despite the incredibly high level of intense chess that this tournament experiences. Here they are with Alexander Grischuk, who beat polish hope Swiercz.

Wei Yi has had no problems with Black - on round one he eliminated Nepomniatchi with that color and in round two he has held Shirov to an easy draw

Another Armageddon winner, Julio Granda, outplayed Leko in a relatively quiet English opening

Radjabov found no dent in Bruzon's Queen's Indian setup and had to concede a draw

"Sigh, how did I get myself into this position..."

"...yeah I know what you mean". Bologan-Svidler ended in a relatively peaceful draw.

Dominguez beat the ultra-solid Onischuk, while Mamedyarov held Matlakov to a half point

Pictures provided by Paul Truong in Tromsø

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Video reports from Tromsø

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN: R1 – R2 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 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.