The 2nd day of round 2 saw some exciting action, and some stunning upset eliminations. The 2 biggest names to go we Wesley So (5th seed) and Ian Nepomniachtchi (12th seed). Included in the list of semi-upsets (lower seeded players drawing with higher seeded players) was Temur Kuybokarov, who drew his 2nd game with Praggnanandhaa. This qill see them off to the playoffs tomorrow, with Kuybokarov hoping to bring his fast chess form that he demonstrated in round 1.
While the games in my section were mostly solid and hard fought, I only ended up with a single drawn match. I had a couple of 2-0 decisions where players tried to hard to bounce back from yesterdays loss, and a lot of 1.5-0.5 results. The two games of interest were Xiong's win over Yuffa, and Esipenko's win over Abasov. In that game, Abasov played about 20 moves of prep in the Two Knights (at lightning pace), before realising he didn't like what he was seeing. After that he was slowly outplayed, before resigning a lost endgame.
There are 27 tiebreak games tomorrow, so if you want a smorgasbord of high level quickplay chess, tuning in is a must!
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