The big boys have joined the action at the World Cup, so let’s start keeping track. 25 players with ratings over 2700 are participating, including Magnus Carlsen, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Fabiano Caruana, and Hikaru Nakamura. (Not in rating order, but in terms of previous world championship successes.) Of those 25, 12 won, 12 drew, and one - Sam Shankland - lost. In fact there were only two favorites out of 64 who lost, and the second one is hardly worth mentioning: Thai Nguyen (rated 2642) lost to Aryan Tari (rated 2641). But as for Shankland…he was better or equal - and usually better - from the start of the game all the way through move 56 against Ivan Schitco. By this time it was Schitco who had the better half of an equality that was heading for a draw, and then disaster struck. Maybe thinking it didn’t matter, or that it was the precursor to an immediate draw, Shankland took a poisoned pawn, blundering into a simple and forced mate in three.
Can he come back tomorrow? We’ll see. Meanwhile, here are three games from today’s action: the Shankland-Schitco upset, a 153 move monster between Pablo Acosta and Bogdan-Daniel Deac, and Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa’s spectacular win over Maxime Lagarde.