In a repeat of Candidates 2014, Vishy Anand won his first round game to take an early lead in the tournament. While Aronian was his victim in the 2014 event, he overcame Topalov in a roller-coaster 49-move game this time round.
Just as in the first round of the Candidates 2014, Anand was White and wheeled out the Ruy Lopez on the board. The game took an interesting turn when Anand went pawn grabbing on the 18th move. The Madras Tiger, as he is often called, was unable to follow-up his 18th move in the best possible manner, thus giving Topalov a deadly chance on his 20th move. Inexplicably, Topalov chose a simplifying move instead of the brilliant resource that would have promised him an advantage. This left Anand with a wonderful position and he seemed to be running away with the game.
However, the game had another twist. From moves 35-40, Anand was unable to find the best moves and he lost a major chunk of his advantage. A serious mistake by Topalov on the 40th move helped Anand weave a deadly net around the Black king. After that, Anand gave no further chances to his opponent and went on to register a crucial victory.
All the rest of the games viz. Karjakin-Svidler, Nakamura-Caruana and Giri-Aronian resulted in draws. While the Russian derby between Karjakin and Svidler turned out to be a pretty dull affair, the other two draws were fairly interesting.