I hope to look at some of the games from the last two days of the prelims of the Aimchess Rapid…but not tonight. Here, however, are the results, and the pairings we get to look forward to tomorrow (Tuesday).
Final Standings (preliminaries):
Jan-Krzysztof Duda 28 (of 45 [on 3-1-0 scoring])
Dommaraju Gukesh 27
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov 27
Arjun Erigaisi 27
Magnus Carlsen 26
Nodirbek Abdusattorov 23
Richard Rapport 22
Santosh Vidit 21
Anish Giri 20
Vincent Keymer 19
David Anton Guijarro 16
Daniel Naroditsky 16
Pentala Harikrishna 14
Eric Hansen 13
Aditya Mittal 12
Nils Grandelius 10
A couple of comments. First, while there wasn’t a mad dash at the end for the final qualifying spot(s) - stratification happened fairly early - there was one bit of drama. Had Giri won his last game or Vidit failed to win his last game, Giri would have qualified. Had Giri drawn, they would have tied, and I’m not sure who had the better tiebreaks. But it didn’t happen, and Vidit advanced.
Second and speaking of tiebreaks, they matter, as Arjun Erigaisi may well acknowledge tomorrow. Mamedyarov may not have an easy time against Abdusattorov and Gukesh may not even be a favorite against Rapport, but I’m sure both are happy that it’s Erigaisi and not them who will be playing Carlsen in the quarterfinals.
About the post’s subtitle, while a couple of the kids (Keymer and Mittal) didn’t make it to the knockout stage, three of the youngsters did - and two finished ahead of Carlsen. Granted, what really matters is what happens over the next four days, but it’s still a great achievement to finish ahead of Carlsen, even in the prelims. (In the previous Meltwater Tour event, you will recall, Carlsen obliterated the field in the prelims, even after throwing away a game in his protest against Hans Niemann.) We’ll see how it goes; here are the pairings for tomorrow’s best-of-four quarterfinal matches, given in bracket order:
Duda - Vidit
Carlsen - Erigaisi
Mamedyarov - Abdusattorov
Rapport - Gukesh