Final leg begins, three candidate spots up for grabs

The final leg of the 2022 FIDE Grand Prix kicks off in Berlin today, and there is a whole lot to fight for. Prize money aside, the players will be fighting for the remaining spots in the 2022 Candidates Tournament. The two top point scorers from the three tournament Grand Prix will qualify for the Candidates, and with Karjakin banned for 6-months, his spot has been vacated and is up for grabs to the highest rated unqualified player. Because Ding Liren doesn’t have enough games to qualify, that is likely to be Aronian, So, Giri, or possibly Rapport if he happens to not qualify via the GP, which is unlikely. The first three will be fighting for Elo and an automatic qualification via the Grand Prix.

It would be confusing to add the complexity of qualifying for the Candidates from either Elo or Grnad Prix, so my odds below only consider the odds of qualifying via Grand Prix. Richárd Rapport played in the first two events and scored 20 points and has a 96% chance of qualifying, so the likely result is the players in Berlin are fighting for one last spot via Grand Prix, and one last spot via rating.

Dmitry Andreikin, who had reasonable chances to qualify if he did well in Pool A, withdrew from the tournament for personal reasons and no longer has an opportunity to qualify for the Candidate’s Tournament. Andrey Esipenko will be his replacement who will almost certainly qualify if he were to win the Leg.

Levon Aronian and Hikaru Nakamura face off on Day 1 of round robin play of Pool A, and Aronian wielding the white pieces has a chance to give himself a significant edge over Hikaru. If Hikaru holds or wins with Black, he will be well positioned to take the crown in Pool A.

The odds below include Live Elo ratings from 2700 Chess.

Odds to Win Leg 3

Name Win % Expected GP Points
Anish Giri 16.7 6.4
Wesley So 15.2 5.7
Levon Aronian 13.7 6.1
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov 13.6 6.0
Hikaru Nakamura 11.7 4.9
Leinier Dominguez 9.1 5.1
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 8.4 4.7
Yu Yangyi 3.7 3.6
Daniil Dubov 1.7 2.9
Nikita Vitiugov 1.7 3.5
Sam Shankland 1.5 2.7
Andrey Esipenko 1.4 2.7
Alexandr Predke 0.9 2.3
Grigoriy Oparin 0.6 1.6
Amin Tabatabaei 0.1 1.6
Vincent Keymer 0.1 1.2

Leg 3 Pool Odds

Pool A

Name Win % Expected Pool Rank
Levon Aronian 48.0 1.7
Hikaru Nakamura 34.0 2.1
Andrey Esipenko 10.4 2.6
Grigoriy Oparin 7.5 3.1

Pool B

Name Win % Expected Pool Rank
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov 47.0 1.7
Leinier Dominguez 41.5 2.0
Daniil Dubov 9.5 2.5
Vincent Keymer 1.9 3.3

Pool C

Name Win % Expected Pool Rank
Wesley So 42.3 1.9
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 28.3 2.0
Sam Shankland 17.7 2.7
Alexandr Predke 11.8 2.9

Pool D

Name Win % Expected Pool Rank
Anish Giri 52.4 1.7
Yu Yangyi 21.9 2.3
Nikita Vitiugov 19.2 2.3
Amin Tabatabaei 6.4 3.0

Possibilities for Qualification into Candidates Tournament

Overall odds of qualifying for the Candidates Tournament

Name Qualify % Expected GP Points
Richard Rapport 96.1 20.0
Hikaru Nakamura 35.0 17.9
Levon Aronian 25.6 16.1
Anish Giri 17.4 13.4
Leinier Dominguez 9.0 12.1
Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 7.3 11.7
Wesley So 5.7 9.7
Shakhriyar Mamedyarov 1.4 9.0
Andrey Esipenko 1.3 6.7
Sam Shankland 0.7 6.7
Daniil Dubov 0.3 5.9
Nikita Vitiugov 0.2 6.5
Alexandr Predke 0.1 5.3