The finish of the World Cup is impetuously coming. After the second day of the finals the price for a mistake increased almost as prices during the world crisis. From now on every game in both matches can become the last one …

Maria Fominykh

Peter plays Black in the second game. There is a superstition that has appeared at this World Cup — if Svidler plays White, the game will be short and drawn.

The sign proved itself once again: in Najdorf system White did not manage to gain the advantage and on the 16^th move the opponents agreed for a draw.

In the opinion of Alexander, the 6^th move of White leads to the most solid and boring position from all those that can be developed in this variation.

Peter Svidler is faithful to his strategy at this tournament.

Grischuk compared Svidler to the famous football player from St. Petersburg Kerzhakov who used to say: «I kicked, I kick and I will keep on kicking!»

The third game of the finalists can turn into the last one if Svidler wins with White again. But this development seems to be something not very real.

One of the games finished very quickly and as for the second one, the fight was going on until the endgame. During the battles on the second floor of the Chess Academy, something different is happening downstairs …

Kema Goryaeva decided to fortify a bit.

The Italian actors came to watch the games of the World Cup. They came to take part in the Theatre Festival in Khanty-Mansiysk

A small chess tournament was organized in the Hall

Having seen the photographer, small chess players started hiding their tins with  Soda. What if their moms would see, a penalty is inevitable.

"Striped friends" — journalist Vladimir Barsky and commentator Anna Sharevich

Having got a slight advantage after the opening Vassily managed to materialize it to an extra pawn closer to the time trouble. After the rough blunder of his opponent — he managed to get an exchange.

Black victories dominate in this tournament — this is magic!

According to Vassily’s words he does not recollect their match with Ponomariov of 2002. He just plays his match for the third place.

Autograph on the note of 1000 rubles — is it a new trend?

A new tradition has been adopted in the press center: a question from a photographer. After the obligatory questions about the game, we give the floor to the photographer Nikolay who asks questions not concerning chess. Thus, we got to know that Ivanchuk has some knowledge of the Latin dances; he also likes sea and swims with pleasure. What kind of questions would you like to ask our heroes?