Bottom seed German GM Dieter-Liviu Nisipeanu (2654) turned out to be the surprise leader at the end of two rounds at the Dortmund Sparkassen Chess Meeting.
The eight player field has the likes of Caruana, Kramnik, Wesley So, Hou Yifan in the line up. Kramnik and So both lost their Round one games but came back strongly in Round two to beat Hou Yifan and Caruana respectively.
Standings after Round 2:
| Rank | Name | Score | Elo |
| 1 | Nisipeanu, Liviu-Dieter | 2.0/2 | 2654 |
| 2 | Kramnik, Vladimir | 1.0/2 | 2783 |
| 3 | So, Wesley | 1.0/2 | 2778 |
| 4 | Naiditsch, Arkadij | 1.0/2 | 2722 |
| 5 | Nepomniachtchi, Ian | 1.0/2 | 2720 |
| 6 | Meier, Georg | 1.0/2 | 2654 |
| 7 | Caruana, Fabiano | 0.5/2 | 2805 |
| 8 | Hou, Yifan | 0.5/2 | 2676 |