Unclear Outcome At Tal Memorial

After nine entertaining rounds at the Tal Memorial, a last round loss by Mamedyarov cost him dearly and denied us all a clear-cut result.

Mamedyarov came unstuck against Gelfand to remain on 5.5 points, and Aronian and Karjakin drew their games to catch him on the same score.

Kramnik restored some pride by beating Shirov to recover to a level score, and Nakamura came within an inch of joining the leaders, but couldn't quite finish off Grischuk in their game.

The tie-breaks for first place were meant to be settled by various result-based criteria but remarkably Aronian and Karjakin achieved EXACTLY the same results!  They drew their encounter with each other and both beat the same two players - Kramnik and Gelfand.  So unless the organisers decide otherwise, it looks like they share first place.

Mamedyarov misses out on a share of the top spot because his victories were against players that performed worse on average than Kramnik and Gelfand.

The final cross-table:

The players now have a days rest before starting the World Blitz Championship (16-18 November).  All the Tal Memorial players (except Shirov and Wang Hao) take part and are joined by an array of other great GMs, including Magnus Carlsen, for a 20-player double-round robin mega-blitz!  The time control is 3 mins plus a 2 second per move increment.

The full line-up:

Coverage kicks off at 15:00 local time in Moscow.  Live games here and live video coverage here.