The first round finished earlier this evening.
Peter Leko tried something rather unusual against Shirov's trademark Archangel with an early ...Bc5.
The complications led to White obtaining two bishops against rook and knight in a very open position where it was unclear who was better. The extra exchange eventually became important and Shirov squeezed a win out of the ending despite the paucity of pawns remaining.
Van Wely played in classical style by playing a minority attack in the Exchange Variation against Short's Queen's Gambit Declined. Short's wriggling didn't loosen the bind and the Dutchman eventually invaded via the queenside and seventh rank.
The other games were drawn in the top group.
Here are the full results:
Sergey Karjakin RUS (2723) 0.5-0.5 Viswanathan Anand IND (2788) Spanish (Modern Archangel) C78
Leinier Dominguez CUB (2719) 0.5-0.5 Vladimir Kramnik RUS (2772) Petroff Defence C42
Peter Leko HUN (2752) 0-1 Alexei Shirov ESP (2719) Spanish (Modern Archangel) C78
Fabiano Caruana ITA (2662) 0.5-0.5 Vassily Ivanchuk UKR (2739) Sicilian Najdorf B90
Sergey Tiviakov NED (2664) 0.5-0.5 Magnus Carlsen NOR (2801) Spanish Closed C77
Jan Smeets NED (2650) 0.5-0.5 Hikaru Nakamura USA (2715) Sicilian Najdorf B98
Loek van Wely NED (2652) 1-0 Nigel Short ENG (2707) Queen's Gambit Declined D37
The b-tournament had three winners, Sutovsky and Nisipeanu, who are amongst the favourites, and Giri who surprisingly downed the highest rated participant Harikrishna.
Ni Hua CHN (2665) 0.5-0.5 Erwin l'Ami NED (2606)
Emil Sutovsky ISR (2666) 1-0 Dimitri Reinderman NED (2575)
Tomi Nyback FIN (2628) 0-1 Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu ROM (2677)
Anish Giri NED (2585) 1-0 P Harikrishna IND (2672)
David Howell ENG (2597) 0.5-0.5 Parimarjan Negi IND (2620)
Anna Muzychuk SLO (2532) 0.5-0.5 Varuzhan Akobian USA (2624)
Arkadij Naiditsch GER (2689) 0.5-0.5 Wesley So PHI (2640)
Amonst the winners we notice the youthful Robson and Grandelius along with top seed Li Chao.
Ray Robson USA (2564) 1-0 S Swaminathan IND (2303)
Robin Swinkels NED (2500) 0.5-0.5 Abhijeet Gupta IND (2578)
Marya Muzychuk UKR (2447) 0-1 Nils Grandelius SWE (2540)
Stefan Kuipers NED (2316) 0.5-0.5 Kjetil Lie NOR (2547)
Zhaoqin Peng NED (2408) 0.5-0.5 Robin v Kampen NED (2470)
Benjamin Bok NED (2337) 0-1 Li Chao CHN (2596)
Daniele Vocaturo ITA (2500) 1-0 Sjoerd Plukkel NED (2259)
For further information official site
Here is a video from our team in the Netherlands.
