This is the problem with round robin tournaments and it happened in the past at least one time, in Curasao 1962.

All the other sports, either by team either by individual, have in our days knock out sessions to reach the top. Also there is no need for a plot. In the last rounds the players who have no remaining hopes to win the tournament is very normal to play without much care, especially against their friends from the same country who are still in the race

@uhavebeenserved

Money makes the monkey dance 

Besides the Russian Chess Federation should be very interested in having Kramnik becoming World Champion again. They could easily pay Grischuk and Svidler to lose their games against Kramnik without Kramnik being aware of such dirty plot, and therefore Kramnik will be innocent and free of guilt of that corrupted maneuver. Kramnik can not control what other people do.

@FilipinoChess

I believe that the process to select the eight candidates is good but the final process to select the challenger for the WCC should be six classical chess games matches during the first two phases and then a 12 classical games final candidates match. And the WCC should be a 24 games match.   

@ptrckmackay what you said about possible collusion in chess to affect the result in the standings is sad but true. If this happens it would be hard to get sponsors willing to put up million dollar purse for top echelon tournaments.

They aren't standard ratings, marklimpin.

Sergey Karjakin FIDE rating is 2830?

The only problem with the double round robin candidates tournament is that the winner basically is winning at least one million dollars because this is the minimum amount the loser of the World Chess Championship wins, and this can be a source of corruption by some players that might get together, for example the three Rusians: Kramnik, Grischuk and Svidler, and decide to let Kramnik win both his games against Grischuk and Svidler and this could easily decide the first place and new challenger for the WCC, and they can decide to split the one million dollars, How? Easily, Grischuk and Svidler will be in Kramnik's team that helps him during the WCC, and Kramnik will pay them $300,000 each for their help and this will be perfectly legal.

It's good to see new faces as the winners in both competitions!  Fressinet and Lahno have been near the top of such events before, but never quite on top.

I noticed also that in the Stefanova-Lahno game, white blundered in almost exactly the same way that Anand blundered against Adams at the recent London Chess Classic -- allowing a back-rank invasion by the heavy opponent pieces in an otherwise drawn endgame.  I wonder if they saw the similarity, too...

Jobova scoring 3/4 with 1.b3 was impressive

There are video highlights of all the games at the Mind Games on their YouTube Channel.  Well worth a look!

Naka is in fine form. 

What's going on with Lev lately??

Not a fan of Naka, but frassinet doesn't deserve his victory against him, he is chasing a draw, Naka forcing a result and unfortunately he got caught.

Hope Levon gets back on track, He's been world blitz and rapid champion before. 2,5 out of 7 is really poor for him.

wow. Amazing games from Fressinet.