That was surprising! Magnus Carlsen and Ding Liren won their first mini-matches in the Goldmoney Asian Rapid against Levon Aronian and Vladislav Artemiev, respectively, as noted a few posts back. But both lost today, both in the second mini-match and in their subsequent tiebreaks. The latter match was more competitive, but for Carlsen it was as if he left his mind asleep in bed. Aronian won games 1 and 4 of the second mini-match (the other games were drawn), and then won both of the blitz games in the tiebreak to advance. (How many times has Carlsen scored just 1 out of 6 in professional competition?)
The final between the "Ar"s starts tomorrow.