The broadcast also said that FIDE had the option of returning the $500 if they deemed that the appeal had at least some merit. I chuckled at FIDE ever returning $$$.

IMO I hope they do return it

Kobalia just flat out playing for a draw as White? wtg. In other news: it seems like Kamsky wanted to test Shimanov's memory, no go and looks like Black equalized

Maybe Kamsky still has an edge, the position seems more awkward to human eyes than what the engine says

Love him or hate him, it's fun watching Nakamura play stuff like 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. f3 against a 2660.

That's actually pretty standard, I think the famous game that gave Shirov the right to challenge Kasparov (which he later got hosed out of, putting Kramnik on Kasimdzhanov level with respect to true WC according to some) was the same opening.

Nice win by Grischuk!!! So far only him and Giri won the games, so many draws...

Nakamura won I believe.

Wins are now in the books for Grischuk, Nakamura, Giri, and Korobov. Players that currently have a Houdini evaluation of more than 1.00 in their favor are Dominguez, Ivanchuk, and Ortiz. And there are several other games still in play that could certainly go decisive even if the eval isn't quite there yet, blunders are of course real, and 2600-2800 rated players are great, but not actually robots. So a few decisive games today so far, and a few more will likely come to pass, but definitely it was a heavily drawish day overall.

Edit: The win for Dominguez became official while I was posting this.
Edit 2: And Karjakin and Mamedyarov added their names to the "evaluate as more than 1.00 ahead" list.

aww robson is going to lose

Moro getting away with murder with 35.Qb4??

ouch ortiz suarez crashing and burning

Robson's position is looking pretty bad... but odds that he wins on time?

Is this just a case of Robson being stubborn? What I mean is this a place where the GM just resigns?

Dreev- Wang Hao has been a fun game to follow

With Dreev-Wang Hao now finished, we have a total of 12 decisive results and 20 draws today. In the decisive games, 11 were won by the higher rated player, with only Granda Zuniga gracing the "upset watch", using the white pieces to overcome a rating edge of 58 ELO and beat Leko. Not exactly the most shocking upset that the world of chess has ever seen. So with well over 50% draws, and no particularly surprising upsets, this was a pretty boring game on the results level (which is very different from saying it was boring on the level of actual chess that was played). Will we see the standings fireworks tomorrow, or are a lot of these pairings content to decide things in the tie-breaks on Friday? We shall see

Edit: There's the 20th draw.

When examining the games on ICC, how accurate are the clocks? I like to try to ballpark when players are out of theory.

Sometimes pretty close to accurate, sometimes way off.

Shimanov played the King's Gambit against Kamsky. Yesssss.

And nine moves in, Houdini likes what he got out of it! I'm rooting pretty hard for Shimanov now.

Me too. Taking down a 2750 with the King's Gambit is pretty awesome.

Are those clocks right? If so, Kamsky is waaaay down on time.

Rut roh, Aronian looks like he's in some trouble - and he drew yesterday so a loss eliminates him. Could we lose the #1 seed in round two?

Edit: If he loses that, then I'll have to do a full revamp of my 2014 Candidates projections tonight

Aronian looks to have recovered for now (according to Houdini, I am too busy with work to do my own analysis) but now it looks like Wei Yi has something going against Shirov - he would also advance with no tiebreaks needed if he won.

Holy crap, did y'all see the tactic Kamsky missed on move 20? Incredibly difficult to see, can't really be blamed for missing it. The eval went from +4 to -6 after white's 20. Rf2. Kamsky missed it, and the eval remained at +4, but white lost the way in time pressure and it looks like Kamsky will likely at least draw now.

It was even a crazier sequence than you describe. Did you see the tactic that Shimanov missed immediately before that? White had a winning maneuver on his 20th move, played Rf2?? instead, and only then did Kamsky miss the winning response. The eval shifted from 1.46 after white's 19th move to 4.42, to -6.21, back to 4.51. Lots of red on the screen if you look at that game in chessbomb, but it looks like Kamsky is through now.

Assuming (obviously not a safe assumption) that all the games with evals under 0.5 draw, we would have six of the top ten through, and four going to tiebreaks.