Corus Round 2 - Every Loser Wins!
The A group at Corus saw 3 decisive games in round 2, including wins for both first-round losers, Vassily Ivanchuk and Alexander Morozevich. Displaying great bouncebackability, Chucky and Moro evened their scores with wins against Wang Yue and Loek Van Wely resepctively.
Wang Yue badly misplayed the white side of a Catalan, and was lucky to last all of 25 moves. Moro had to work harder against Van Wely, but ultimately managed to grind his opponent down.
But game of the round was arguably Sergei Movsesian's (pictured) swashbuckling opening gambit choice which led to victory against England's Mickey Adams.
Stellwagen did well to hold Carlsen to a draw, despite the Norwegian pressing hard (and almost over-pressing) as usual to try to crack his opponent's resolve. Likewise, Jan Smeets held Karjakin in their encounter. The other games of the A group were quiet draws.
The full results in round 2:
| Smeets, Jan | Karjakin, Sergey |
½-½ | 36 |
Sicilian Najdorf |
| Movsesian, Sergei | Adams, Michael | 1-0 | 38 |
Giuoco Piano |
| Stellwagen, Daniël | Carlsen, Magnus | ½-½ | 36 |
Ruy Lopez Berlin |
| Radjabov, Teimour | Aronian, Levon | ½-½ | 15 |
Scotch Game |
| Dominguez Perez, Leinier | Kamsky, Gata | ½-½ | 26 |
Caro Kann Advanced |
| Morozevich, Alexander | Van Wely, Loek | 1-0 | 43 |
Gruenfeld |
| Wang Yue | Ivanchuk, Vassily | 0-1 | 25 |
Queen's Gambit |
The B Group provided some fascinating encounters, with Hou Yifan recovering from her first round loss to beat the top seed Krishnan Sasikiran, Nigel Short beating Vallejo Pons, and 16 year-old Fabiano Caruana despatching the veteran Brazilian GM Henrique Mecking.
In Group C, Manuel Bosboom followed his first round win against David Howell with another against his countryman Friso Nijboer to take the sole lead on 2/2.
