Leinier – the World Blitz Chess Champion last year –will have to beat Caruana in the tiebreak matches on Thursday after tying in his two classical games if he wants to make it into Round 3 of the tournament.

Caruana is a young talented Italian player who already eliminated Cuban GM Lazaro Bruzon (2619) in the first round of this tournament. Earlier this year he won Group B of the strong annual Dutch tournament of Wijk aan Zee.

In some unexpected results of Round 2, Czech Viktor Laznicka again downed Alexander Morozevich on Wednesday and eliminated the Russian from contention; Philippine Wesley So tied with Ukrainian Vassily Ivanchuk and also ousted him from the event as he had won on Tuesday; and Russian Konstantin Sakaev drew with Azerbaijan’s Teimor Radjabov and won 1.5-0.5 on aggregate.