Some links, the ongoing club event:
http://www.chess-results.com/tnr302878.aspx?lan=1
The race to Candidates spreadsheet by Martin BennediK:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vRSmA4EaB0NXCJ7U3rmfYf4mhmdQGN7Alf_hyQmkkx4dSMpy5vsKVD8pit9iRdlLbmUFro6WzHn97Kg/pubhtml
The European Team Championship (Oct 28-Nov 6) that might become Kramnik's last chance to secure a rating spot:
This is gonna be helluva interesting IMO.
It's impossible to guess the draw of the upcoming rounds, but if Kramnik gets "lucky" he could get for example Svidler, Inarkiev and Naiditsch and have almost all the Elo points he needs already if he wins the games. (And this might also get Svidler a wild card in the end. Svidler has +3-2=18 with white against Kramnik, and maybe a loss with white would fuel speculations if Svidler benefits from it even if I don't think he ever would throw a game).
If Kramnik's unlucky he could face a couple of 2400s. Even 11th ranked Dunajska has a player below 2450 on first board. And even if Kramnik wins these games easily it's still just one Elo and the number of games quickly disappearing. The best he can hope for is Svidler, Inarkiev, Naiditsch and Ding Liren, but then it's far from certain that he can win every game against them.
I am a big Kramnik fan, more so than MVL, but I feel MVL got cheated out of a spot by not being able to play Ding Liren in the World Cup. Kramnik would have lost to Aronian well before an armaggeddon match.
MVL hasn't had much luck in the qualifications, being eliminated first in the Armageddon game by Aronian in the World Cup, and probably losing out with a small margin also in the Grand Prix. Maybe he has played too much, he has had good results in events outside the Candidates qualifications. He won Sinquefield Cup ahead of Carlsen after beating him, and is second in the Grand Chess Tour with one event left, and has decent chances to win also that ahead of Carlsen. But he won't get any wild card this time.
Mamedyarov blew Nisipeanu off the board and has now picked up ”Kramnik’s” 5.7 Elo very easily in the first rounds.
In the third round Kramnik finally plays, but it sure is no easy game to gain Elo. He is black against Wojtaszek, and their three previous games have been drawn. The same result today would mean -0.8 for Kramnik while a win gives him +4.2.
I have no evidence, but although he says he wants to play, I get the feeling that Kramnik isn't that keen on playing the candidates. Could he ever beat Carlsen? No, not realistically. So, why bother? Better to go through the motions and then not reach the candidates. Save face. He will always have his name on the list of World Champions anyway. He beat the strongest player ever to win that title.
I have no evidence, but although he says he wants to play, I get the feeling that Kramnik isn't that keen on playing the candidates. Could he ever beat Carlsen? No, not realistically. So, why bother?
Maybe, but Kramnik often sounded in interviews as if he doesn't really consider Carlsen to be stronger than himself. Less than four months ago he said that Carlsen's previous results were inflated. Kramnik meant that he had "good chances" of qualifying for the match, and that he "would have chances" to win the match. At the same time Kramnik's "good chances" may be a bit optimistic. Winning the Candidates is no easy thing, he has played it many times in many formats without winning. It will be seven years since Kramnik won a classical only event when the Candidates are played, and it will be considerably stronger than all the Dortmunds he didn't win since 2011. I would rank Caruana and Aronian as favourites, but if Anand could win it in 2014 Kramnik ought to have some chances in 2018.
It's easy to forget that Anand actually was leading the Candidates also in 2016 after as many as ten rounds (after beating among others Karjakin). Then he was a bit unfortunate to run into some great prep from Karjakin, which gave the latter his this far only win against Anand, otherwise the latter might well have won the Candidates again. So being well into the 40s is nothing that prevents the best players from still being competitive in these events, Anand has great results both in 2014 and 2016.
I'm rooting for Aronian. For me, that is the showdown that will bring the most to the chess world. Aronian has positive record against Carlsen of late. However, Aronian doesn't have a great candidates track record...
Sooner or later Aronian must do well in the Candidates, and Carlsen vs Aronian would be a great match.
Let's not forget epic Candidates (last 5 rounds) with Carlsen, where tie-break (fair or not) decided Carlsen to win the tournament over Kramnik.
Around move 20 Wojtaszek vs Kramnik looks like a probable draw. Not much time used by the players and tiny white advantage in not very complicated position.
The round 4 draw means that Kramnik is likely to get a 2441 rated opponent in the fourth round, and with only three games left after that even four wins won’t be enough to pass So. Kramnik will have to settle for the wild card or play the European Team Championship, but to do the latter he will probably want a strong finish here.
Let's not forget epic Candidates (last 5 rounds) with Carlsen, where tie-break (fair or not) decided Carlsen to win the tournament over Kramnik.
Yeah, he needed a little luck that tourney, and things could have gone differently.
I feel like it was the correct outcome though. He was winning top tournaments and he was the highest rated player (and has remained so).
Feel bad for MVL at the world cup this year though.
Kramnik doesn’t even play in the fourth round, it turns out.
Sooner or later Aronian must do well in the Candidates, and Carlsen vs Aronian would be a great match.
This is his lucky year. He won several big tournaments, got married, ousted MVL, won the World Cup tournament, and was able to wear a cat shirt and not get called out for it while Kovalyov wore shorts and left the tournament.
Will his luck run out?
Well, it certainly sounds like it's about time it did.
Kramnik should be black against Naiditsch in the next round. Not an easy game to win just like that, Naiditsch is 2702 and won his latest game against Kramnik (with black!).
A draw would mean -1.3, a win +3.7 Elo. Kramnik needs to gain 16.7 Elo on the November list to reach So, and there are only two games left in this event after the one against Naiditsch. Then there is the European Team Championship Kramnik hasn’t yet decided if he will play, and those games would count on the December list.
Kramnik needs 2802 on the last rating lists of the year to get a rating spot in the Candidates ahead of So. He has mentioned that he hopes to reach that, and that he will play also the European Team Championship if it is needed. Kramnik isn't registered to play this event, but even if it is against the regulations to change the line-ups now, Kramnik said that he has been promised to enter if he wants to play. Apparently there is no penalty for these cases, apart from the extra registration costs.
Now, the problem is that Kramnik really needs every point he can get in the short European Club Cup he currently is playing. The event is only seven rounds, so there's no point in sitting out any rounds. Still, Kramnik didn't play the first round, where Mamedyarov instead played first board of the team and gained the 2.3 points from beating the opponent from Iceland.
Then, in the second round, Kramnik sits out again. This time he would have had white, and gained 3.3 Elo from a win against Nisipeanu. So why isn't he playing? These two games should have been the "easiest" points in the event, and with wins in them he would already have been 2791.2 and needing just 10 points and a fragment more. In the next round he will be bound to get black, and the opposition could get stronger. This will depend on circumstances though, and few of the top boards are stronger than Nisipeanu, so it might also turn out to be a good idea to sit out the game against him.
It could also be that Kramnik already has been informed that the Russian main sponsor will give him the wild card. But then he would still be interested in helping the sponsor getting another Russian as the wild card. If Kramnik gets the rating spot it would free up the wild card for Svidler (if Grischuk gets in there from the Grand Prix in the end). And this could get even more interesting, since Kramnik has good chances of facing Svidler in the ongoing team event...