These players had met on four previous occasions, and Morozevich had yet to score so much as half a point against the world number one. Maybe this explains why Kasparov sacrificed two pawns straight out of the opening – he probably felt he could do anything and still beat this guy!

And he was almost right! In a clearly favourable position, Morozevich suddenly blundered a piece. But alas, Garry lost his head in time-trouble, and in the end he had to force a draw.

Before this game, Bareev was cruising along on +2, and no one had so far been able to lay a glove on him. And for a while it didn’t look as though Shirov was going to be able to make a dent in his armour either. The first critical moment arose on move 13, when Bareev, obviously feeling lucky, decided not to swap queens. The second one came along four moves later, when Bareev rattled off the "enigmatic" Ra7.

Suddenly Black was in trouble, and Shirov wasted no time getting the show on the road by opening up the centre with a spectacular pawn sacrifice.

Having won his first round encounter against Movsesian, it seems as though Georgiev will be content to draw the rest of his games. Getting absolutely nothing out of the opening, the Bulgarian only made a token attempt at winning. The only boring game of the round.

Mickey wins again! The English Ace seems to be finding his stride, after an unimpressive start. OK, he got more than a little help from Gurevich in this game, but it’s a known fact that you can’t win unless your opponent makes mistakes.

Movsesian’s opening play has been well under par in this tournament, so it came as no surprise when he failed to get an edge against Sokolov. Movsesian was only slightly worse in the early middlegame, but it was clear that the Czech didn’t understand the position. The sum of White’s mistakes eventually reached critical mass, and Sokolov had no difficulties scoring his first win of the tournament.

Incidentally: Movsesian is now 0 for 3 with white!

Etienne Bacrot is beyond a doubt one of the world’s most promising young players, but the 17-year-old Frenchman is clearly out of his league in this premier event. In this game he suffered his fourth consecutive defeat, after being strategically outplayed by the Bulgarian number one. Topalov’s exchange sacrifice on move 12 is highly instructive.