Aronian beats Nakamura

In the most important game of the day, Levon Aronian (with white) beat Hikaru Nakamuru. Hikaru went into the Queen’s Gambit Accepted, and faced more than 20 moves of preperation from Levon before playing 23…Nf4??, a move he was not able to recover from. Note the ‘?’ are not from me, the only way I could tell it was a mistake is by looking at Stockfish on Chess.com!

The win is big for Aronian and the loss is even bigger for Nakamura, who sees his chances to qualify for the Candidate’s drop from 35% all the way down to 10%! The win for Aronian also places some extra distance between him and those behind him on the rating list, which helps ensure he qualifies to the Candidate’s even if he doesn’t qualify via the Grand Prix.

As Hikaru’s odds decrease this solidifies Rapport’s qualifying chances, as the only way he wouldn’t qualify is in some scenarios where Nakamura does qualify.

Other decisive games: Alexandr Predke beat MVL, and Nikita Vitiugov beat Amin Tabatabaei. The loss for MVL is quite detrimental, as he’ll need to win his pool in order to have chances to qualify.

Odds to Win Leg 3

Name Win % Expected GP Points
Levon Aronian 19.7 7.4
Wesley So 18.3 6.2
Anish Giri 16.8 6.5
Leinier Dominguez 15.4 6.7
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov 9.2 5.0
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 6.2 3.2
Yu Yangyi 3.1 3.7
Hikaru Nakamura 2.7 2.4
Nikita Vitiugov 2.6 4.4
Andrey Esipenko 2.6 3.3
Sam Shankland 1.5 3.0
Daniil Dubov 0.9 2.0
Alexandr Predke 0.8 3.0
Grigoriy Oparin 0.3 2.2
Vincent Keymer 0.0 1.6
Amin Tabatabaei 0.0 0.5

Leg 3 Pool Odds

Pool A

Name Win % Expected Pool Rank
Levon Aronian 67.3 1.4
Andrey Esipenko 20.5 2.5
Hikaru Nakamura 8.4 2.7
Grigoriy Oparin 3.8 2.7

Pool B

Name Win % Expected Pool Rank
Leinier Dominguez 60.5 1.6
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov 31.5 1.9
Daniil Dubov 6.1 2.9
Vincent Keymer 1.9 3.0

Pool C

Name Win % Expected Pool Rank
Wesley So 48.3 1.8
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 22.1 2.6
Sam Shankland 17.6 2.5
Alexandr Predke 12.0 2.5

Pool D

Name Win % Expected Pool Rank
Anish Giri 51.6 1.6
Nikita Vitiugov 27.4 2.0
Yu Yangyi 21.0 2.2
Amin Tabatabaei 0.0 3.6

Possibilities for Qualification into Candidates Tournament

Overall odds of qualifying for the Candidates Tournament

Name Qualify % Expected GP Points
Richard Rapport 98.9 20.0
Levon Aronian 36.0 17.4
Anish Giri 17.5 13.5
Leinier Dominguez 15.9 13.7
Wesley So 10.1 10.2
Hikaru Nakamura 9.8 15.4
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 6.5 10.2
Andrey Esipenko 2.5 7.3
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov 1.0 8.0
Sam Shankland 1.0 7.0
Nikita Vitiugov 0.4 7.4
Daniil Dubov 0.2 5.0
Alexandr Predke 0.1 6.0
Grigoriy Oparin 0.0 2.2