After a few days of weirdness and getting settled back into something like normal life, it’s time to resume blogging. (Many posts will be coming over the next few days, if I have any control over things. Stay tuned!) Let’s begin by catching up on the biggest of the current events, the Road to Miami online event in the Meltwater Tour.
Again, the preliminary stage of the tournament is a 16-player round robin using 3-1-0 scoring; the top eight make it to the knockout stage. Day 1 was already covered here; so let’s say a bit about the next three days.
There were four big stories on day 2. The nicest, I’d say, was the performance of women’s world champion Ju Wenjun. Despite being the lowest-rated player in the tournament - by far - she went 3-1 on the day, completing a 4-1 stretch going back to the final game of day 1. Her final day’s performance of 1.5-1.5 wasn’t bad either, but starting the tournament with an 0-3 score and then going 0-4 on day 3 kept her out of contention for the K.O. stage.
Second, Arjun Erigaisi had a great second day, going 3.5-0.5. That was a fine performance, but it was topped by the hero of story #3, Sam Sevian, who went 4-0! Or should we say 3-0? He won his first three games, and then the fourth game was against the subject of the fourth story: Teimour Radjabov. Or rather, was to be against Radjabov.
Unfortunately, after his 0.5-3.5 start on day 1, Radjabov, who was also feeling under the weather, decided to call it quits. This must have been quite a disappointment after his surprisingly successful third-place finish in the Candidates, but if he had to pick one event to go badly and one to go well, he chose correctly.
As for the last two days, there was significant stratification at the top and the bottom, and a race in the middle for the last qualifying spots. Levon Aronian and Anish Giri didn’t have great starts, but they played well enough in the last days to sneak in. Wei Yi managed to get the last qualifying spot, with Aryan Tari, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Radoslaw Wojtaszek and Leinier Dominguez all coming close…but not close enough. Here are the final standings of the preliminary stage:
Sevian 32 (of a possible 45)
Erigaisi 31
Duda 28
Rapport 27
Xiong 24
Giri 24
Aronian 22
Wei Yi 19
Tari 18
Mamedyarov 18
Wojtaszek 18
Dominguez 17
Ju Wenjun 16
Niemann 14
Shankland 13
Radjabov 0 (Actually 1, for his bogus draw with Mamedyarov, but because he dropped out early in the event his scores were erased and everyone received 3 points for beating him, whether they played him or not.)
This means that the pairings for the knockout stage are as follows (in bracket order):
Sevian vs. Wei Yi
Rapport vs. Xiong
Duda vs. Giri
Erigaisi vs. Aronian
Finally, here are some games from the event, with my comments.