Clarity in the Bracket: players settle in after bloody round 4 tiebreaks
7 of 8 first-games of the round of 16 were draws, as players recovered from some remarkable results in the previous round’s tiebreaks. 13 of 32 players in round four held a 2700 rating, and only six of them made it to round five. In order of rating: Vincent Keymer, Praggnanandhaa, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Richard Rapport, Yu Yangyi, Parham Maghsoodloo, and Awonder Liang said their farewells. Of those, only Maghsoodloo and Yu lost to a fellow 2700, though with the advancing players including Sam Shankland and Daniil Dubov, it is not as though each elimination was a huge surprise.
The result is a much clearer lower half of the bracket, where suddenly #2 seed Arjun Erigaisi is a much more obvious favourite. What was a super-quarter next to him lost all of Pragg, Rapport, MVL, and Keymer in a single day, with the highest seed left being #27.
While Levon Aronian and Wei Yi will offer strong challenges, Erigaisi will nevertheless be a little more relaxed. Should all the top seeds continue their runs, we would see Sindarov vs. Liêm Lê in one semifinal and Erigaisi vs. Esipenko in the other. Three players will qualify for the Candidates tournament, which will definitely be something other than a straight collection of the top 8 players in the world.
The second games of round five begin shortly. Follow along on Lichess.
Photo by Eteri Kublashvili
