Macauley Peterson has kindly produced a number of short video reports based on quick interviews held immediately after each games with the players.
The first one comes from the first game to finish today ... Kasimdzhanov - Leko
The second video comes from Topalov - Grischuk which as expected was a hard fought fight between two of the top uncompromising world players.
Third video is from Dominguez - Giri where the young Dutch talent had the upper hand after Leinier miscued just around the time control
Gelfand was the only player this round to bring the full point home although one must clearly state there was no failure on all players' attempts to try and win today.
This was clear from both the last games to finish in the first round, which squeezed everything out of the position. Mamedyarov's relief that the game was finally over after 110 moves, can be seen in the following video interview. Stour defence kept the draw and 108.Ne1! was a nice touch to take off the final pawn for black.
Another game which went the full length was Michael Adams against Wang Hao and after Adamd took the initaitive in the late middlegame he converted this to a pawn advantage in a rook endgame which was very difficult to win. After 72 moves an interesting motif of stalemate was chosen to share the point.
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