McShane Leads In London
Luke Mcshane continued his excellent start to the London Chess Classic with an exciting win against Nigel Short in round two.
The former Goldman Sachs trader (pictured) won a complicated clash against Short with the Sicilian Dragon to take the sole lead on 2/2.
Magnus Carlsen hit back after his first round debacle to beat English #1 Mickey Adams in a deep positional game.
Meanwhile Kramnik gave Nakamura a present of a dubious piece sacrifice on the American's 23rd birthday. Kramnik created as much trouble as possible after that, but was always struggling to demonstrate compensation and eventually had to conceded defeat.
Vishy Anand tried the Sicilian against Howell, but the tournament underdog kept things simple with 3. Bb5+ and despite Anand winning a pawn in the major piece ending, he let any winning chances slip away for the second game in a row.
With the 'Bilbao' scoring system in use (3-1-0), the missed opportunities by Anand could prove very costly.
| Name | Nat | Elo | Pts |
| McShane, Luke | ENG | 2645 | 6 |
| Nakamura, Hikaru | USA | 2741 | 4 |
| Kramnik, Vladimir | RUS | 2791 | 3 |
| Adams, Michael | ENG | 2723 | 3 |
| Carlsen, Magnus | NOR | 2802 | 3 |
| Anand, Viswanathan | IND | 2804 | 2 |
| Howell, David | ENG | 2611 | 1 |
| Short, Nigel | ENG | 2680 | 0 |
Why, why, why did I sac a piece? Kramnik suffers in round two...
All smiles for the birthday boy...
IM Lawrence Trent and GM Danny King in the commentary room
Round three starts soon at the 'regular' time of 14:00 GMT, and features McShane v Kramnik, Adams v Short, Anand v Carlsen, and Nakamura v Howell.
Let's have even more great games please guys!
All pictures courtesy of Ray Morris-Hill.
