As noted already, what counts most in the prelims of the Aimchess Rapid is finishing in the top eight, and at the moment things have sorted themselves out rather nicely. After day 2 and eight of the fifteen rounds there’s a clear top eight, and of the bottom eight only four players aren’t entirely out of the running.
The leader is still Nodirbek Abdusattorov. He entered the day leading with 10/12 (the tournament uses a 3-1-0 scoring system in the prelims), and though he lost his first game (against his countryman Santosh Vidit) to fall into a tie for first, he then won against Dommaraju Gukesh and Pentala Harikrishna to regain the lead by himself. His draw with Anish Giri in the day’s last round let the field gain ground, but he remains in first by himself.
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Magnus Carlsen are nipping at his heels though, just a point behind. Shakh started the day three points behind Abdusattorov and then lost in round 5 against Vincent Keymer. Big problem? Not really: he won his next three games, against Aditya Mittal, Richard Rapport, and David Anton. Not bad for a day’s work. Carlsen also won three games and lost one, though in a different order. He started with wins against Rapport and Anton, but then lost to Arjun Erigaisi before finishing with a win over Vidit.
Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Erigaisi are a further point back, with 15/24, and then three points back there’s a three-way tie for the final three qualifying spots. At the moment, they would go to Gukesh, Keymer, and Giri, in that order on tiebreaks. They have 12 points apiece, two points ahead of Rapport and Vidit and three points ahead of Mittal and Naroditsky.
Seven rounds remain, so no one has been eliminated yet. Realistically though, the pool is shrinking, and at the moment only the top five players seem to be in sufficiently fine form to be plausible contenders in the knockout stage. But we’ll see - as Yogi Berra famously said, it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future. (Actually, it’s very easy. What’s tough is getting them right.)
The stratification, with maybe little tension at the end on who qualifies and who narrowly misses out, is unusual for this series. It may be due to the composition of the field: if we consider the teenagers to be a bit underrated, only Rapport not qualifying (at this stage) might be surprising - he is "pretty good" in rapid, but I think he has little experience playing such Internet events.
Pairing sequence is coincidentally peculiar: almost everyone has to face three of the most established players in consecutive rounds - Carlsen, Duda and Mamedyarov in this order, the fourth one would be Giri. Abdusattorov still has to do it in rounds 11-13, it could only affect his pole position? For Gukesh, it's next in rounds 9-11, he could be out of the top8 afterwards? Erigaisi currently has 1.5/2 against the trio, Mamedyarov next. Keymer has 2/3 - could have been 3/3 as he had missed several wins against Carlsen. In general, he seemed to be in pretty good shape before/but for his surprise loss with white against Aditya Mittal in round 8. Rapport already failed the test (0/3).
Another peculiarity is that almost everyone has to face four of the five Indians in consecutive rounds - Erigaisi, Vidit, Gukesh and Harikrishna. The fifth one is Aditya Mittal, Abdusattorov isn't from India.
Finally: I always attributed "it's tough to make predictions ..." to Mark Twain, another suggested source is Niels Bohr. Another one (of several more) is Yogi Berra, I haven't heard of him before. Attribution of the quote depends on personal awareness (and preference)? On top of the Google search for the quote Yogi Berra is called "a baseball-playing philosopher", Wikipedia (in English and also in German) calls him a baseball player known for "Yogiisms". I like to quote the Dutch "football (soccer) philosopher" Johan Cruyff who said - among other things - "Every advantage has its disadvantage" (or the other way around, the quote exists both ways).