We’re down to the last three days of this marathon event, and the winner will be either Magnus Carlsen or Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa. While it would be hard to bet against Carlsen, it should be noted that Pragg has already defeated the world’s #2 (Fabiano Caruana) and #3 (Hikaru Nakamura) in this event, so the result is hardly a foregone conclusion. Today’s game was a minor victory for Carlsen, in that he achieved an easy draw with Black; at the same time, a short day for Pragg after his harrowing match with Caruana, including yesterday’s tiebreaks, was probably just fine with him, too. Expect Carlsen to put in a serious effort going for a win tomorrow, as a rapid and blitz tiebreak against Pragg is not even close to a sure thing - even for Carlsen.
In the match for third place, it seems that Nijat Abasov did a better job of bouncing back from his semi-final loss than Caruana did. Abasov obtained a pleasant advantage with White, but then both players committed various inaccuracies generally based on undervaluing the move f5 - whether it was f4-f5 for White or …f7-f5 for Black. This mini-drama came to an abrupt end when Caruana thought for more than 20 minutes before playing 23…Qb4??; instead, 23…f5 was equal. After 23…Qb4, Abasov played 24.Bxh7 Kxh7 25.Ne4, using less than a minute for each move, and it was clear that Black was completely lost. Caruana spent five minutes before playing 25…Qe7 (returning the queen where she was before playing …Qb4), and after 26.f5 he resigned. An awful finish for Caruana. The match is not over, and despite Abasov’s excellence in this event there’s no reason to think that Caruana isn’t still the (much) better player. So he’ll have his chances. (Regardless of the result, they’ll meet again in the Candidates.)
The games, with my comments, are here.