Levon should intentionally draw a won position

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Mild194

Hear me out.

In the 3rd leg of the Grand Prix, group A looks like this going into the last round:

Aronian: 3

Nakamura: 3

Oparin: 2 1/2

Esipenko: 1 1/2


Imagine that a few hours into the last round, Levon is winning against Oparin and Hikaru is losing against Esipenko. If those results hold, Levon wins the group and Hikaru comes in 2nd. So Hikaru gets 4 Grand Prix points, finishing on 17. Levon is also sitting on 17, such that if he loses the semifinal in Berlin and no one else reaches 17 points, he ties with Hikaru and misses out on the candidates spot via the “tournaments won” tiebreaker.

For this reason, in this hypothetical I think that Levon should offer a draw from his winning position. Oparin will accept, of course, and this puts both Oparin and Hikaru on 3 points in the group. They then tie for 2nd, so Hikaru gets 3 Grand Prix points instead of 4, and Hikaru is eliminated with 16 Grand Prix points to Levon’s (at least) 17, with Levon having a safer path to the candidates spot. It would be Levon helping out Oparin, with no damage to his own prospects other than a few rating points, in order to bump down Hikaru.

This scenario opens up one more weird possible occurrence, because this obviously only works for Levon if Esipenko does in fact convert his winning position against Hikaru. You could imagine a disappointed Oparin resigning, but Levon rejecting his resignation because he wants to wait and see if Hikaru can stage a comeback before deciding whether it’s in Levon’s best interest to win or draw. This is the only situation I can think of where rejecting a resignation actually makes competitive sense, but it’s feasible.

sherwini0987


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NotDiphead

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