Decisive day 2 shakes up odds

Another exciting day of chess! 3 decisive games, and one draw with a really significant implication. Giri won again, solidifying his likelihood of winning his pool and increasing his odds of winning the tournament to 35.6%, up 10% from yesterday. Vidit and Shankland also nothced wins, bolstering their chances. A tough couple of days for Grischuk sitting on 0 points after two rounds, the Russian has more on his mind than chess, and I imagine it’s difficult to have the mental clarity required for top level chess right now.

Shakhriyar Mamedyarov may have been one of the bigger ‘winners’ of the day. A fighting game with MVL that resulted in a draw positions Shakh nicely to take the lead in the pool later on when he wields the white pieces against MVL. Still really early to know how important that game will be, but it is the last game of the round robin and likely to be the deciding game for Pool D.

After today’s games, I’ve run 50,000 simulations so we can see the expected results in Belgrade, with Candidate’s tournament qualification odds below. Another update coming after tomorrow’s games.

Belgrade Odds

Name Win % Expected GP Points
Anish Giri 35.6 9.4
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov 21.3 6.9
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 9.7 4.3
Dmitry Andreikin 9.2 6.2
Vidit Gujrathi 7.5 6.4
Richard Rapport 6.4 4.9
Sam Shankland 3.1 4.8
Yu Yangyi 2.0 2.3
Nikita Vitiugov 1.9 4.0
Alexander Grischuk 1.1 1.9
Alexandr Predke 0.9 2.5
Vladimir Fedoseev 0.4 1.5
Alexei Shirov 0.3 1.7
Pentala Harikrishna 0.2 1.9
Etienne Bacrot 0.2 1.5
Amin Tabatabae 0.0 0.7

Possibilities for Qualification into Candidates Tournament

Overall odds of qualifying for the Candidates Tournament

Name Qualify % Expected GP Points
Hikaru Nakamura 49.7 18.0
Anish Giri 37.1 15.2
Levon Aronian 27.9 15.7
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov 23.3 12.6
Leinier Dominguez 10.5 11.6
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 9.9 9.1
Dmitry Andreikin 8.8 9.3
Richard Rapport 8.3 11.9
Wesley So 7.6 9.7
Sam Shankland 4.1 7.7
Nikita Vitiugov 3.3 8.3
Yu Yangyi 2.8 5.5
Daniil Dubov 2.2 6.2
Vidit Gujrathi 2.1 9.4
Alexandr Predke 1.6 4.3
Alexander Grischuk 0.3 3.9
Amin Tabatabae 0.2 2.4
Grigoriy Oparin 0.1 1.8
Vladimir Fedoseev 0.1 3.5
Vincent Keymer 0.1 1.8
Pentala Harikrishna 0.0 3.9
Etienne Bacrot 0.0 1.5
Alexei Shirov 0.0 1.7