Updates: TCEC Superfinal, Palma Grand Prix
Thursday, November 23, 2017 at 12:26AM
Dennis Monokroussos in Houdini, Komodo, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Palma Grand Prix 2017, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, TCEC Season 10, Teimour Radjabov

It's still early in the superfinal of season 10 of the TCEC, but so far it's looking pretty one-sided. After 14 games (of 100), Houdini has won four and lost none, drawing 10. (Okay, technically it's +3 =10, but game 14 is a foregone conclusion in Houdini's favor, and it might finish the second after I upload this post.) Unfortunately, we weren't treated to a Houdini-asmFish match, but regardless, this is an impressive performance so far by Robert Houdart's program.

As for the Grand Prix tournament in Palma de Mallorca, the leaderboard is even more crowded. Those in first, or in the second-place tie, all drew, maintaining the status quo amongst themselves, while even more players managed to jump into the huge tie for second. Levon Aronian still leads - now with four points out of six (with three rounds to go), and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Hikaru Nakamura, Ding Liren, Peter Svidler, Pentala Harikrishna, and Dmitry Jakovenko are all still tied for second with three and a half points...and so too are Evgeny Tomashevsky and Richard Rapport.

Tomashevsky's win was especially noteworthy, as it came at the expense of Teimour Radjabov. Radjabov entered the event hoping to qualify for the Candidates with a sufficiently strong result here, but now he's at -1, tied for 11th place. He hasn't yet been mathematically eliminated from contention, because if, say, he wins his last three games while all the other games are drawn he'd qualify, that isn't a particularly likely scenario. At least he can take comfort knowing that if he doesn't make it, his countryman (and, I think, friend) Shakhriyar Mamedyarov is guaranteed to qualify for the Candidates.

As for Vachier-Lagrave, the good news is that he's in second; the bad news that it's a tie for second-ninth. If the tournament ended now, he'd be out of luck. He had Black in round 6, so at least he'll (probably) get the white pieces twice in the last three rounds. If he does qualify, it will come at Alexander Grischuk's expense, which would make for a double misfortune for him. Not only would he not qualify this way, but he's missing out at the chance to get in by the wildcard: the organizers already gave the spot to his fellow Russian Vladimir Kramnik.

Article originally appeared on The Chess Mind (http://www.thechessmind.net/).
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