First Games of FIDE World Cup Played in Khanty-Mansiysk
Not all rating favourites won.
First games of the First Round of the FIDE World Cup were played in Ugra Chess Academy on September 10.
Vasily Filipenko, President of the Ugra Chess Federation, and Konstantin Penchukov, Chairman of the city parliament, made ceremonial first moves in Press - Ding Liren game on the Board 1.
Most of the higher rated players achieved victories. There were, however, a few upsets., as it often happens at the World Cups. Radoslaw Wojtaszek lost to Johan-Sebastian Christiansen, and the young Andrey Esipenko defeated Ruslan Ponomariov.
Hikaru Nakamura, Levon Aronian, Peter Svidler, Dmitry Adnreikin, Bu Xiangzhi, Wang Hao, Vladislav Artemiev, David Navara, Maxim Matlakov, Le Quang Liem, Santos Vidit, Nikita Vitiugov, Evgeny Tomashevsky, Boris Gelfand, Wei Yi, Samuel Shankland and some other players only managed to make draws, facing much lower rated opponents.
The games between players with more or less similar ratings were very closely contested. Rustam Kasimdzhanov defeated Evgeny Bareev, Ivan Cheparinov defeated Ahmed Adly, Maksim Chigaev lost to Parham Maghsoodloo, David Anton Guijarro was stronger than S.L.Narayanan, Baskaran Adhiban outplayed Eduardo Iturrizaga, Vladimir Fedoseev prevailed over Surya Ganguly, Maxim Rodshtein defeated Mateusz Bartel, Arkadij Naiditsch lost to Niclas Huschenbeth, while Jorge Cori lost to Nihal Sarin.
Second games of the First Round will be played on Wednesday, September 11. The players will play against their today's opponents with colours reversed.
