After the teaser, the thriller opens on Tuesday.
The chess World Cup’s second round is where the real action begins: all the big stars, given a bye in the opening round, start their campaign at Resort Rio.
The knock-out format ensures even the strongest Grandmasters cannot afford big mistakes.
Top-rated Indians like D. Gukesh, R. Praggnanandhaa, Arjun Erigaisi, Nihal Sarin, and Aravindh Chithambaram, as well as overseas stars such as Anish Giri, Levon Aronian, and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, will be there to spice up the tournament.
From the first round, nine Indians have moved to the second. Six of them had gone through by scoring at least 1.5 points from the two classical games. The others came through the tie-breaker route, featuring games of much shorter time controls.
The first to clinch a spot in the second round was S.L. Narayanan, who won both games in the first set of rapid games against Steven Rojas of Peru. “I had it pretty easy in the rapid games, but that certainly wasn’t the case in the classical format,” said the Thiruvananthapuram-based player, who is rated more than 200 Elo points above. “In the classical games, he had played much better than his rating.”
A little after Narayanan romped home 2-0, Diptayan Ghosh also came out of the venue, smiling. He too won by an identical margin, against his Chinese rival Peng Xiongjian.
Kolkata’s Aronyak Ghosh also made it to the second round, after beating his higher-rated rival Mateusz Bartel of Poland 2-0 in the second set of tie-breakers; they had a win each in the first.
The two other Indians in the tie-breakers, R. Raja Rithvik and M.R. Lalith Babu, lost in the third set of tie-breakers to Kazybek Nogerbek of Kazakhstan and Max Warmerdam of the Netherlands. They both put up strong fights, though, and took the matches to the third set of tie-breaks.
The day, however, was Oro Faustino’s. The 12-year-old Argentine overcame Ante Brkic of Croatia, 25 years his senior and 69 points above in rating. The prodigy won 2-0 in the third set of tie-breaks.
Important results (First round; tie-break):
Robert Hovhannisyan (Arm) bt Kavin Mohan (Mas) 1.5-0.5; S.L. Narayanan bt Steven Rojas (Cub) 2-0; Diptayan Ghosh bt Peng Xiongjian (Chn) 2-0; Aronyak Ghosh bt Mateusz Bartel (Pol) 1-1, 2-0; Kazybek Nogerbek bt (Kaz) bt R. Raja Rithvik 1-1, 1-1, 2-0; Max Warmerdam (Ned) bt M.R. Lalith Babu 1-1, 1-1, 2-0; Oro Faustino (Arg) bt Ante Brkic (Cro) 1-1, 1-1, 2-0.
Published on Nov 03, 2025