All four games in Game 2 of Round 2 finished with a draw. Evgeny Bareev offered a draw to Peter Leko already after 15 move. Obviously he was trying to recover from his upset loss in the first game. At the press-conference Bareev said that he planned to make this game very long taking an initiative, but unfortunately he failed to do so.

The other 3 games also ended up in draws, but one could watch the great struggles, especially between Alexey Shirov and Levon Aronian. It turned out that Shirov could not convert a big advantage into a victory. Also, Boris Gelfand achieved a positional advantage against Gata Kamsky, but the American Grandmaster was defending in a stubborn way. After the game it was not clear if this game was winning at some point for Gelfand who was rather dissapointed. In the Russian duel Rublevksy-Grischuk it became clear that Rublevsky could not receive any advantage even playing with the white pieces. Grischuk is obviously in great form, should be considered as a clear favourite in this pair.

Photos by Kema Goryaeva. Charts from Chessbase.