White in the first game

The 2019 FIDE World Cup was officially opened last night with an entertaining opening ceremony, which contained the usual assortment of welcoming speeches, singing and dancing, and human chess pieces. As part of the ceremony, there was the drawing of colours, in which the top seed (Liren Ding), chose the black pieces for the first game.
After the ceremony there was a players meeting where the rules were covered. While it was a mixture of seriousness and good humour, there were a couple of interesting points that came out of it. Firstly, this looks to be the first World Cup without any female players. Secondly, no one admitted to being a smoker when the topic of the smoking area came up. Nonetheless I'm sure there are still a few smokers in the field, which might be confirmed if smoke is seen escaping from the ladies bathroom.
I'm spending the last few hours before the first game doing my prep. Ding may pull a surprise for this game (and to be honest he could pretty much play anything against me), but in recent games he has stuck to the same opening choices. All I need to do is not overload my brain with too many lines, keep my nerves in check, and I should be able to play at least a few moves before the holes in my opening repertoire become obvious.