Rapid games, day 2 and 3

In general, in the rapid tournament I had a lot of up and downs, and there was always a lot of miracles or "disasters" happening at the board. First miracle happened against Karjakin, where I made a big inaccuracy in the opening and as a result I had a lot of troubles defending my position, but my opponent missed a clever tactics forcing perpetual check.

In my second game against Mamedyarov, I got a very promising position after a few precise moves in the opening, but then I started making a lot of inaccuracies in my quest to secure a pleasant edge, and the edge was afterwards too slim to become a win. Finally, against Ponomariov, no miracle happened, I simply lost a really well played game by Pono, kudos to him especially for his opening choice, which was extremely cunning.

The last day there were two games, first I won a good Berlin endgame against Nielsen, in which I found a way to set some problems which PH was unable to solve. Then I was paired against Gashimov, and a win would give me 3rd place, which wouldn't have been a bad result at all, and I got a very good position where I could try to squeeze my opponent without risk, or so it seemed... At some point I started blundering tactics : first a pawn break which freed his position, and then another pawn break with a nice follow-up on my king which I had missed, and that already gave him a winning position, which he calculated precisely until the end. So I finished on average, and that was slightly disappointing given the course of the event, but not such a bad result after all.

Congrats to Wang Hao for being the deserved winner there, he began with 4 wins in a row and despite a loss round 5 he recovered on the last day and finished clear first with 5.5/7.