The third day of the FIDE World Cup has finished and all the results of the first round are in. The remaining 22 matches continued with playoffs after two classical games.
According to the regulations of the World Cup tiebreaks two rapid games are played at a rate of 25 min+10 seconds. If the score is still tied two accelerated rapid games are played with a time control of 10 min + 10 sec. If the score is still deadlocked two blitz games are then played at 5 min + 3 sec. Finally, if a winner has still not been determined a sudden death Armageddon game takes place.
13 players were eliminated after two rapid games and the majority of the rating favorites, including Sergey Karjakin, Vladimir Fedoseev, Dmitry Andreikin, Evgeny Tomashevsky, Yu Yangyi, Wei Yi, Etienne Bacrot, Boris Grachev, Vassily Ivanchuk, Michael Adams, Maxim Rodshtein and Francisco Vallejo Pons, advanced to the second round. American player Samuel Sevian was the only “underdog”, who defeated a bit higher rated opponent Liviu Dieter Nisipeanu at this stage. The youngest participant of the World Cup Anton Smirnov from Australia, who made 2 draws in the games with classical control against Sergey Karjakin, lost the first rapid game and did not manage to equalize the score in the second one.
Aryan Tari, Daniil Dubov, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Pentala Harikrishna, Baskaran Adhiban, Anton Demchenko, Luka Lenic were stronger with 10 min + 10 sec time control. Norvegian GM Aryan Tari defeated 2700+ GM David Howell from England by winning the last game after 5 draws in the previous encounters.
The last match of the round 1 between Georgian player Baadur Jobava and Ivan Salgado Lopez obviously attracted enormous attention of local spectators and was decided in blitz. Baadur outplayed his opponent in the 8th game and remains the only Georgian player, who managed to proceed to the next stage.
The second round of the FIDE World Cup starts at 3 p.m. local time on 6th of September. 64 participants will continue playing but same as before only half of them will advance to the next stage.