Ivanchuk, Muzychuk lead after second day

Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine emerged as the sole leader after the end of the Round 10 of the Fide World Rapid Championships with eight points at the Ali Bin Hamad Al Attiyah Arena yesterday.
Mamedyarov Shakhriyar and Ian Nepomniachtchi were tied second with 7.5 points.
Top-seed and world champion Magnus Carlsen was joint fourth with seven points. Carlsen was joined by Day One leader Anton Korobov of Ukraine, former champion Viswanathan Anand, Armenia’s Levon Aronian, India’s Vidit Gujrathi, Russia’s Alexander Grischuk and Cuba’s Dominguez Perez Leinier.
Day One leader in the women’s section, Anna Muzychuk, maintained her lead by 1.5 points after the end of round eight. The second seed played two draws against compatriot Inna Gaponenko and Russia’s Kateryna Lango in the first two games of the day. She came strongly to beat Georgia’s Nana Dzagnidze and Russia’s Alina Kashlinskaya in the last two rounds.
On Day One, Korobov and blitz world champion Muzychuk had maintained a clean slate in the men’s and women’s section respectively.
Anand had won his first game against Kazakhstan’s Rinat Jumabayev in the first round, but was held by China’s Xiangzhi Bu in the second, England’s Davis Howell in the third and by France’s Laurent Fressinet in the fourth. He finished the opening day with a win against Spain’s Francisco Vallejo Pons.
Top-seed Carlsen had got off to a shaky start, pulling off a great escape in the first game against Indian GM Surya Shekhar Ganguly, who was playing with black pieces, before pushing too hard. In the second, he was convincingly outplayed by Levan Pantsulaia.
Carlsen started the game with unusual moves in a plot to confuse Ganguly, who kept his calm and took the advantage of his opponent’s inaccurate play. With time pressure mounting, he missed an elementary mate in three moves as Carlsen managed to draw with a perpetual check. The draw was a surprising result as everybody expected an easy win for the Norwegian.
“It was a typical first round game. To get a draw when you’re a piece down and your opponent has mate in three ... That’s kind of nice,” said Carlsen.
“What I’m happy about is that it was not even worse. The first couple of games were awful of course,” said the world champion, who has not returned to Norway since October and wasn’t planning on returning until February.
However, defending champion hit back with three wins to end the day on 3.5 out of five, to join Anand, Hikaru Nakamura, Ian Nepomniachtchi and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.
The Norwegian defeated Cristobal Henriquez Villagra in 30 moves, Diego Flores in 27 and then Ernesto Inarkiev in 41, after he emerged from a tricky middle-game with a superior rook ending that he converted into an easy win.
For Ganguly, the draw against Carlsen was both the high as well as the low point of the opening day. He could have easily beaten the world champion, but let him off the hook. A draw against Carlsen is an excellent result, but this is not how the Indian grandmaster would have wanted the game to end.
However, he drew his game against Nepomniachtchi, another excellent rapid player. Ganguly did lose to Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, but wins against Sergey Kayumov and Parham Maghsoodloo to finish the day on three points.
The hero of the day Korobov, whose performance just got better and better, started by beating Kazakhstan’s Rustam Khusnutdinov, India’s B Adhiban and Iran’s Pouria Darini before coming up against Alexander Grischuk in round four. Playing with black against Grischuk, he showed aggressive play and a keen tactical eye. In round five, Korobov won against China’s Yu Yangyi with a violent attack which drove black’s king from the kingside to the queenside.
Carlsen’s world championship opponent Russia’s Sergey Karjakin also fared poorly. After pushing too hard against Nils Grandelius in the first round, he began the tournament with a loss. After wins in rounds two and three, he lost again in round four. In the fifth round, he once again had to show his amazing defensive skills to draw the game and to finish the day with 2.5 points.
India’s Vidit Gujrathi shared the third place with seven others at the end of the fifth round.  Gujrathi started off with a fine win over Aryan Gholami, a talented youngster from Iran. He then beat the man-in-form, the Olympiad gold medal on board one Baadur Jobava. This was followed by a crushing victory over Russia’s talented youngster Vladislav Artemiev.
The 23-year-old Indian lost his fourth round game against Vasily Ivanchuk, but he didn’t let that affect him, as he bounced back with a win over Vladimir Akopian.
“It was a good day at the office. Four out five is a fine score, but mainly I am happy with the quality of the games so far,” Gujrathi said.
Muzychuk leads the women’s section with a perfect four out of four on the first day. She defeated one of her main rivals Alexandra Kosteniuk from an irregular opening and a weird sixth move by Black, eventually winning a double-rook endgame in the fourth round. Muzychuk also defeated Lela Javakhishvili, Russia’s Aleksandra Goryachkina and Russia’s Natalia Zhukova to end the day with four out of four.