We saw Yuri Drozdovskij at dinner after tie-breaks. To my question about the development of the games the winner of the most difficult match of the first Round said: «He missed all the goals»- and left to get some sauce.

Yuri had time to change and looked relaxed. Who could have thought that he had spent the entire day in furious battles that ended in «Armageddon» for the ticket to the second Round against Alexander Motylev? This is sport: while the struggle is going on — there is passion in the air, emotions are taking over, but in half an hour after the clock is stopped everything calms down and there is only a winner and his defeated opponent left.

Maria Fominykh reports on the 3^rd day of the tournament

This is the way the most tense game of the day started. The players went up the stage as usual at 3p.m. The curtains went down only about 9 p.m. However, this was not the record. Every time during tie-breaks some of chess players would recall on the game of Pavel Tregubov and Varuzhan Hakobian at the World Cup 2009 that lasted till 1 a.m.

Alexander Motylev, the opponent of Drozdovskij, seem to have lacked energy: he played Black in «Armageddon» (i.e. from the beginning of the game he had one minute less than Yuri), however, Motylev made his moves as if it was broadcast in a slow regime. When he had only 30 seconds left, it was clear that he would not have enough time to get to move 60 in order to have 3 additional seconds more for every move, he would not have managed to do it physically.

Playing Hall during tie-breaks: many vacant chess boards , rarely you can see pairs and arbiters and there is one arbiter for each table!

Greek GM Stelios Halkias — one of the few participants accompanied by his wife here.

Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu and Yifan Hou came to watch the games — they are not participants any more, but spectators.

Elshan Moradiabadi and Darcy Lima also in the role of spectators

Strange as it may seem, not only the knocked out ones but also many qualified players spent this day in the Chess Academy.  Indeed our sportsmen are the fans of their game: they were here on their rest day!

The finalist of the first Round Alexander Riazantsev and second of Gata Kamsky Andrey Volokitin

Alexandr Fier is waiting to see who will qualify and become his opponent in the 2^nd Round  — Morozevich or Halkias

Among spectators — Russian Grandmaster Pavel Smirnov who came to play in the Governor’s Cup that starts on 31 August

In the match between Yuri Shulman and Vladimir Potkin the position was equal, but the 6^th game was in favor of the Russian player

Peter Heine Nielsen and Evgeny Postny played all the time controls except «Armageddon»

Etienne Bacrot was close to win the tie-break when there were 25 minutes left — after the 1^st game he was leading in score and all he had to do is not to lose playing Black. However, we suppose and the fate dictates: Robson playing White developed King’s Gambit and confidently made revenge. However, experience made its decisive move.

At the press conference the opponents were speaking about one and the same thing looking in different directions

Ray Robson is leaving the tournament

Alexander Onischuk made his compatriot laugh

A difficult match was played by the strongest Khanty-Mansiysk GM Alexey Bezgodov. He gained intiative in the classical games and in rapid games of 25 minutes each he was fighting equally and only in «10 minutes ones» lost to Nikita Vitiugov.

Markus Ragger (AUT) got into the «black list» of knocked out ones

Evgeny Vorobiev had the initiative, but did not manage to goal in appropriate moments

«If you miss the goal — they score the goal to you», — it was the way Moscow GM characterized his match development with Emil Sutovsky

Emil Sutovsky from Israel already has his fans in Ugra

Igor Lysyj who managed to play in classical and rapid games, will play against a «non warmed up»Alexander Ivanov in the 2^nd Round

Alexander Morozevich in rapid games was acting confidently than in classical ones

Francisco Vallejo- Pons — Jorge Cori

One of the sensations of the day: young Yaroslav Zherebukh outplayed his compatriot Pavel Eljanov who was considered to be the favorite in this pair

Ruben Felgaer — another hero of the day «without a tie». Always smiling representative of Argentina overcame Vladimir Malakhov of Russia. Vladimir excused himself from the press conference having made a remark that if he blunders a queen in one move — then he has nothing to say.

There are only two players left at the World Cup from the numerous Chinese delegation. One of them — Ni Huawho outplayed Russian Ildar Khairullin in tie-breaks.

It took Vladimir Potkin long time to warm up and as a result he finished tie-breaks on the upper note

Brazilians seem to become popular not only as outstanding footballers but also as strong chess players. Alexandr Fier outplayed the famous Wang Yue and qualified for the second Round while Di Berardino, although lost the match to Gata Kamsky, also showed himself as a perspective player.

Sebastien Feller — Viorel Iordachescu

The French Grandmaster is expected in the press center. Right after the victory over Iordachescu Feller disappeared. I decided to ask some grandmasters I know whether they had seen Sebastien. As a reply she got some black humor: he removes cables here and there. Later on Sebastian appeared in the press centre and answered all the questions including the one about his court case in France.

Who is in fact Sebastien Feller?