The Chess Mind

In my last post on this tournament, I noted that Rublevsky and Malakhov won in "ordinary time", leaving the other six matches headed for tiebreaks. Those results, along with those of the already-finished matches, were as follows:

1st/2nd: Aronian defeated Ponomariov, 3-1
3rd/4th: Bacrot defeated Grischuk, 2.5-1.5
5th/6th: Bareev defeated Gelfand, 3.5-2.5
7th/8th: Rublevsky defeated Gurevich, 1.5-.5
9th/10th: Kamsky defeated Carlsen, 3-1
11th/12th: Malakhov defeated Vallejo Pons, 1.5-.5
13th/14th: Dreev defeated van Wely, 2.5-1.5
15th/16th: Lautier "defeated" Sakaev, 3.5-3.5 (Lautier drew the Armaggedon game with Black.)

Congratulations are in order to the top 10, and perhaps Malakhov too, who is liable to sneak in if any of the other players, whether from here or elsewhere, choose to drop out of the process. Also, special "props" are in order for first prize-winner Levon Aronian. Early in the year he broke the 2700 barrier, but expressed some doubts about his "super-GM" status: he wasn't sure he could maintain that rating against the elite players. Yet in his last three individual events, Aronian has two victories and a close second place to his credit, and the chess world has someone new to really watch out for.