After 5 rounds of play only 3 players are left with a perfect score of 5 which means that the top board game today will be certainly one to watch as we will have FM Ilja Lipilin play against FM Stanislav Babarykin, who both currently have a clean score. To see the results of all of yesterday's games have a look on Tornelo, where you can also find all the pairings for today.
Whilst Indian player Samarth J Rao's game yesterday against Russian Sergey Serebryakov didn't quite go in his favour he has taken part in quite a few tournaments over the past years and last year Dora Martinez spoke with Samarth and his father about overcoming challenges and how chess has been part of his life for a long time. We wish him all the best against his game today against Mohd Azanni Ahmad from Malaysia.
As anticipated yesterday's games brought along some more movement with 6 players left on a perfect 4 out of 4: Mohammed Aayan Ismail of England, FM Ilia Lipilin of Russia, FM Stanislav Babarykin of Russia, Leonel Amato from Argentina, Alexander Choroszej from Poland and Harlen Jose Otero Munelo from Venezuela. Therefore, every point and half point over the final 4 rounds will count and a lot can still change.
Polish FM Lukasz Nowak won his game yesterday against Sundui Sonom from Mongolia. Living with spinal muscular atrophy, his grandfather taught him chess at 7 years old - Sagar Shah interviewed Lukasz earlier on this year where they are also analysing some of his games.
Today's pairings can be found already on Tornelo and we are looking forward to another exciting round of chess!
Similar to the first round the second round brought mainly decisive games, with the top board results as anticipated.
Jessica Lauser from the US drew her game against Polish WFM Anna Stolarczyk. Jessica lives with retinopathy, impacting her vision, and she spoke to CNN about the importance of chess in her life, highlighting how the game is an equaliser.
After 2 rounds the top spots on the leaderboard are currently taken by some of the strongest players in the field but there are also some lesser known names amongst those sitting on 2 points right now, like Audietya Aazadh Parmathi of India whose ELO rating of 1404 is significantly lower than the other participants in the running on first place. We also have Ganbataar Tuvshinbataar of Mongolia as the only none ELO rated player amongst those with 2 points. Those are only some of the names that will be worth watching over the next rounds.
Chess 24 is also broadcasting the games live from 12:00 UTC, making it even easier to follow all the action! Amongst the 115 games paired for today's round we are likley to see some interesting games.
We are already a third of the way through the tournament and things are definitely starting to heat up! There has been a bit of a movement on the top with the consideration of the tiebreaks so the next couple of games will certainly be interesting to watch and see which way things are going to go!
Benjamin Akok from Australia won his game yesterday against Khanh Lam Nguyen from Vietnam. Have look here and when you scroll to the bottom he shares how chess influences his day to day life. It is great to see participants like him join the tournament from all corners of the world - celebrating the range of diversity only chess can offer.
You can also follow the games on Lichess who are broadcasting all boards live from 12:00 UTC.
Good luck to all players today!
It's been a really interesting start to the tournament with only with only 8 draws across the 123 pairings that were scheduled today! Reigning champion GM Marcin Tazbir won his game against Aleksandr Zhakov of Kyrgyzstan. IM Igor Yarmonov of Ukraine also won his match against Rolando Gamboa Mora of Costa Rica. Polish WFM Anna Stolarczyk defeated Turkish player Altas Seltman. American player Griffin McConnell scored a point in his 52 move match against Aniket Mohapatra from India. As a participant of previous tournaments, including the Junior World Chess Championship for People with Disabilities Griffin shared his story with chess.com earlier on this year. It is great to see so many young players take the opportunity to test their skills on the board against some more seasoned opponents.
All in all, the first day of play didn't bring too many surprises in the matches but we are sure that we will see some interesting games over the next couple of days. The full results of Round 1 can be found on Tornelo, where you can also follow the action of the remaining rounds.