Giri defends lost position, Caruana and MVL join leaders

Hi guys! Ding lost again today and Wang Hao wasn't able to convert a winning position vs Anish Giri in a complicated endgame.  Alekseenko couldn't hold today against Caruana, who joined the leaders. It surprised me how many people have already played 1. c4 in this tournament. It is an interesting choice, but I thought that more players would play d4 or e4. The calmest game today was a game between the two Russian Grandmasters, Alexander Grischuk and Ian Nepomniachtchi. They played an e4 e5 endgame, and drew more or less simply, except that at the end of the game, Nepo had 1 hour while Grischuk had a couple of minutes  Let's start with that game!

Grischuk says "Half of the game I slept, and then next thing I see I have 6 minutes on the clock." Both players seemed happy with the result, I don't think that either of them tried to go for a win at any time during the game. Playing the Berlin in the first place basically says "I want a draw" or "I'll tire you out in a long endgame" which Grischuk couldn't do because he spent so much time, and at the end he didn't have enough time on his clock to consolidate his advantage into something bigger. 

The Chinese Grandmaster has lost his 2nd game. Everyone is doubting his chances now, as the only player with 0/2. His aggressive g5?! try in the game means that he is losing control of his play in this tournament. Tomorrow he has to play against Fabiano Caruana, the first seed in the tournament. We will see if he is playing better chess tomorrow, and if he is able to withstand the previous rounds. Grischuk offered the explanation that he was poisoned!?!

Wang Hao was playing a great positional game until the moment that he played e4?! He helped his opponent exchange the isolated pawn, and get more compensation for the pawn by activating their knight. Anish Giri was stuck on the defensive role this round, and he did a good job for most of the game.

Standings after Round 2:

As requested, I will make my predictions for tomorrow in all of the games. Here are my predictions for the pairings tomorrow:

GM Ding Liren  1/2-1/2 GM Fabiano Caruana

GM Anish Giri  1/2-1/2  GM MVL

GM Alexander Grischuk 1/2-1/2 GM Hao Wang

GM Kirill Alekseenko 0-1  GM Ian Nepomniachtchi

Coronavirus Updates for the tournament

So far, it looks like the tournament is under control. None of the players have tested positive for the virus. (Thankfully)  It seems like the most popular way to get the virus is to shake hands with the player or person that has the coronavirus but doesn't know it. There are currently 147 coronavirus cases in Russia. Here is a way to prevent the chess players from getting corona:

Anand was a guest at the stream again today, and it was very educational. I would like to share it with you guys: (They are all split up into small videos).

As usual, I will post my daily activity for you guys! Have fun doing it! CLICK ME TO GO TO THE DAILY ACTIVITY

See you guys tomorrow! I hope you enjoyed!