^very interesting especially the part about the Karparov simulation. I wonder if FIDE have done anything similar.
Anyway, I'll try to go back to topic too
this has a lot of discussion already.
Conversely to what you said about Nakamura, Aronian is notable for his
good starts to tournaments. I can think of a heap of tournaments where he won his first or second game and often with black. The times he wins big events it's often with 1 or 2 wins in the first few rounds then he draws the top players and defeats or draws with the bottom half players. Obviously just a 0.5 lead over Carlsen is pretty meaningless this early though.