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Favorites don’t get in trouble in Reykjavik’s first round

David Navara

David Navara won his game in 20 moves

The Reykjavik Open 2013 started today in Iceland. The event gathered a large field with very strong players, including four rated above 2700.

Participants /Follow the games live

As it usually happens in the big opens, the first round sees some very unbalanced match-ups. For instance, the top seed Anish Giri is facing an Icelandic player whose elo is 650 points lower.

This fact makes the first round results quite predictable. However, sometimes a surprise might happen because the higher rated player is over-confident or the lower rated player is having the game of his life.

Until now, all the games are turning well for the favorites. The first result came when Czech GM David Navara defeated Marcel Martensini from Switzerland in just 20 moves, after the Swiss made a mistake in the opening.

Other early winners are English GM Gawain Jones, Ukrainian GM Pavel Eljanov and French GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.

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