It's no longer a 3G network, but two of the Gs - Gelfand and Gashimov - survived. For Gashimov it was pretty easy, beating Caruana in the first two rapid games and drawing the third, but for Gelfand it was only in the 6th tiebreak game, the second in their blitz mini-match, that sufficed to knock off Vachier-Lagrave. As for the third G, Grischuk went down 2-0 to Jakovenko in their blitz mini-match.
As for the feel-good story of Wesley So, this chapter has come to an end, as Malakhov wiped him out 3-0 in the rapid games. Finally, in one of history's dullest matches, Bacrot forgot to draw the ending of their fourth rapid game, and was eliminated by Ponomariov. We can all wake up now.
Games of note: the first Caruana-Gashimov game was really wild, and my impression when I first saw it was that Gashimov had fallen into some amazingly deep tactical preparation. Impressively, Gashimov took the material, held on, and won. In the first Malakhov-So game, So looked outclassed, but he was right back in game two, pushing all the way. Unfortunately, he pushed a bit too hard and committed an act of chess hara-kiri.
All four blitz games (from Jakovenko-Grischuk and Gelfand-Vachier Lagrave) were very interesting. Starting with the first blitz round, Grischuk with White seemed to have the better deal: two weak black pawns to only one of his own, but somehow it was White's weaknesses that wound up being more significant. Meanwhile, Gelfand, with Black, had an extra pawn in return for significant suffering. It took him quite a while, but he finally overcame everything and could start trying to use his pawn - only to blunder with 46...Bc7+?? He was extremely fortunate that he could still draw after that, and it's a testament to his competitive character that he came back and won in the next game - and impressively too. As for Grischuk's second game, he was pressing hard and had some chances - only to fall comically into mate at the very end.
We're down to the final eight now - all from the countries of the former USSR! (Gelfand is not an exception: he has lived in Israel for about a decade, but he's from Belarus.) Here are the pairings:
Gelfand - Jakovenko
Mamedyarov - Karjakin
Gashimov - Ponomariov
Svidler - Malakhov
Who's the favorite? Mamedyarov has at least one advantage: he should be well-rested, as he hasn't had to play a single tiebreak! (Ironically, Akobian played twice as many games in the first round as Mamedyarov has the entire event.) Better still, he has had two days off, thanks to Laznicka's absurd 13-move draw. Gelfand is the top seed and highly experienced, and Svidler's résumé is just as impressive. Ponomariov can boast of having won one of these before - for the FIDE World Championship, no less. Karjakin was a semi-finalist back in 2007 and won one of this year's super-tournaments, so his credentials are pretty good too. Only Jakovenko and Malakhov are slight outsiders, but not much, especially since Jakovenko was rated as high as 2760 earlier this year. Whatever happens, let's just hope the chess is good!
(Games here.)