So... Radjabov lost today to lose the match 2-0, he is the highest seed (3) to get knocked out so far and although I did not expect that much out of him in this tournament, I was really surprised to see him get crushed like this by someone over 100 points lower than him. Ponomariov lost yesterday and today had Black. The game looked very drawish but he was able to win, so looks like he will go through (he will win the playoff).

Other than that my IT guy was going through the programs on my computer at work and he's like "What's Dasher?" and I was like "I use it." hoping he would leave it at that, but he figured out it was for chess and deleted it... So no more ICC at work I guess... That sucks.

LEP brought up that there is no betting but, like March Madness, there is the potential for some impressive upsets. But then I started thinking... there's a bracket available on the Fide website... We should start a pool!! This round did see a couple upsets in the first game, young Radjabov avoided his normal Pelikan Sicilian and got trounced in the offbeat Ruy Lopez Schliemann, guess the experiment failed. Ponomariav lost again... which puts a lot of pressure on him. And poor Carlsen couldn't even get his pieces out (with White!) and by the time he did the game was equal and he was held to a draw.

Mamedyarov cruised to a win. Shulman drew Shirov with White, the other Americans won (Kamsky with Black!!). Some interesting games... this tournament is growing on me. I still say that with fewer players and more rounds per match it would be more interesting though.

I am serious about the pool, I think it would be cool to fill out some brackets and see who we put in the final four... even if there is no money involved.

I personally think that the knockout in Khanty-Mansiysk is one of the worst high level tournaments that there is. Why are there 128 players? Here is the first round http://cup2007.fide.com/results.asp. Aside from a couple upsets, pretty much what you would expect. The higher seeds getting through easily. I know that they want to experiment with different formats than the double round robin, but I would still rather see just the top 16 players go at it.

That being said I am rooting heavily for Mamedyarov, who has captured my attention in the past year and has been playing very good chess. I think that Ivanchuk, who did have a spectacular year, has collapsed (look at his more recent results) and will go down easily in the next few rounds. Carlsen is getting better very quickly but I do not think this is his year. Of course Svidler, Grishy, and Aronian should never be counted out and Shirov had a good performance in the Tal Memorial (relative to Kramnik's sheer dominance of that tournament). Anyways, the later rounds should be interesting but until then this tournament sucks.

I almost forgot to congratulate Yuri Shulman (my old coach) for getting to the second round.