FIDE
KO Kick-off
A running report by Jonathan Tisdall - for the
live version see our Chess Message Boards.
Round One, Day One
A bit of confusion early in the day as the
official site seems to have kept the starting time
of the games a bit of a secret.
Some very tough fights, though one of my favorite
characters, Loek van Wely, was the first into the
clubhouse with an amazingly short draw as
white. Usually he is a LOT more stubborn than that,
so we have to wait and see.
The guaranteed tension of the play-offs doesn't
mean that all of these mini-matches will be bloody
- there are a lot of quick-play specialists who
prefer to just conserve energy during the
"real" games and bank on advancing on their edge
as the games get faster. But I think Loek just got
annoyed with getting nowhere fast.
The Canadian GM Lesiege had a relatively easy time
of it, slapping his Chilean opponent with
a few tactical blows, the second one knocking him
out of his chair.
Surprises
Later in the session we started to see the first
upsets, and it was France that provided most
of the drama.
Kramnik second Joel Lautier was upended by young
Brazilian talent Leitao, and Igor Nataf carried
out a hyperactive demolition of Israel's
Emil Sutovsky.
Not only major surprises, but both winners scored
with black - which might mean a very early
exit for the favorites here.
I was particularly interested to see how
the lowest rated player - Kalmykia's Utnasunov -
would do. Despite a really horrible start, he managed
to hang on against Chernin for nearly 150 moves
(!), no doubt finally going down helped by the suddenness
of death.
In the women's event one of the biggest upsets also
contained the arguably the biggest blunder
of the event so far - check out Khurtsidze's hair-raising
gaffe against a surprisingly tough Khan.
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to round 1 results.
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