Giri should retire as the only undefeated player in history and do commentary. His postmortems are actually quite a show and a lot more interesting than his games.

Jan on chess24's dry sense of humor really comes through when he's working solo. He's hilarious.

Yes, Vishy. **** the haters.

Karjakin couldn't handle 5 hours of staring at the beaver pelt.

yes this, he doesn't play off Rudolf very well and Van Weily makes me want to hang myself

That's like the third time Fabi got into time trouble and couldn't convert an advantage. He could be crushing this tournament.

I laid +450 on Giri to win the event at the start, these have been an extremely tilting 11 rounds.... not even a close to a losing position so many wins for the taking that he missed, even if he JUST had today's he'd be in it.

He's another player who could be frustrated with missed opportunities.... of course... I'm sure currently leading on H2H tiebreaks with just 3 rounds to go is good consolation.

LOL

I wonder what the main root of his time trouble is.

Perhaps some type of confidence issue? The chess sin of perfectionism? Or the sin of looseness? (See GM Jonathan Rowson's excellent book The Seven Deadly Chess Sins).

I guess it's most likely a combination of things.

My guess is Fabi is too much of a perfectionist, really trying to find the best move in all situations.

They were both in some sort of time trouble I believe, though, right? But still, going 1 out of 2 with Topalov after having relatively straightforward wins is kind of ridiculous.

Giri is a bit ridiculous too although his wins seemed less forcing with more work to do than Caruana.

Still a very good day for Fabi. Basically up .5 on the field is not too shabby.

Inb4 a chess article titled

Fabi - He's Not Too Shabby

Looks like Naka may really be Anand's kryptonite. Geez.

Also seems like Topalov may be going insane shortly though so it could end up being back to the same two horse race before last round setting up an epic last round game.

Of course, based on the last couple of rounds, these games may all completely flip near the time control with missed wins/draws so who knows.

Naka eliminated Anand. Fabi should spend him a drink at least.

Quote of the day on Chessbomb:

That's kind of awesome. In other news, Topalov did indeed go full ****** and it looks like Karjakin will effectively be .5 points up on Fabi going into the last two rounds. JFC.

Maybe something can be found in this game against Aronian but the computer sure doesn't think there's anything at all there to be had.

The interesting part about Topa's game is that he already had this position on the board and lost to Paco Vallejo in 2012. This time he played a novelity (Nb6) that isn't even among the first 4-engine choices and immediately got into trouble again. Van Kampen even claimed that Topa played a line that is known to be losing.

Now if Svidler played that against Karjakin or Hikaru against Caruana it would seem quite fishy. But with Topalov it's just him being insane.

That was the nut low for Caruana. Now he's losing the tiebreak heads up to Karjakin... but if Anand somehow catches back up, he wins the 3-way.

I wouldn't say effectively ½ up considering if he loses that ground then he does lose.

Yeah. Although with their tie break scheme it seems to me someone will have a tie break edge, with a playoff being pretty rare.

OK so I am confused... Here are the current odds for the tournament winners:

Caruana -115
Karjackin -105
Anand +1450
Giri +2000
Aronian +2500
Svidler +4000
Naka +15000

I am trying to figure out how Naka isn't mathematically eliminated at this point and I cannot. He's 1.5 back of the leaders, lets say he wins out and Cara/Karj draw final game. Naka has - against both players so how can he even win on tiebreaks. Perhaps if Anand is also part of a 4-way tie he can? but that doesn't seem right either. Is a Naka win even constructable?

If this was the final game of an NFL regular season it would be all mapped out for me somewhere but I think we're up to our own devices

My understanding is it's H2H, # of total wins, Sonnenborn-Berger.... it would be pretty hard to be tied in all of these.

That's my point. In this tournament there really isn't much tying, so if you are tied but have the tiebreaks you are simply ahead as I'd you had a half pint on the next closest guy.

Also seem to think Caruana's chances are being ridiculously over-states by the oddsmakers, if he doesn't outperform Karjackin tomorrow he's gonna have to win with Black.

They're probably thinking Anand-Giri tomorrow won't be decisive but considering both still have a prayer at this thing if they win... I'd have to believe there is every chances a Giri game finally ends with a win to someone.