Coming into the last round of the prelims, three players had a shot at the last qualifying spot for the knockout stage of the Aimchess US Rapid tournament, the last of the "regular" Meltwater tour events for the year. Leinier Dominguez and Anish Giri had 7.5 points out of 14, with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave half a point back. Giri had the worst tiebreak scores of the three, so he'd have to finish ahead of his rivals to get that last spot. Giri had Black against Alireza Firouzja, while MVL had White against Dominguez. Since someone was guaranteed to get at least eight points from the latter match, Giri would have to win his game, and hope Dominguez did not win, to advance.
He got what he needed from MVL-Dominguez. Dominguez played the Petroff and held, with neither player coming within a mile of winning. And in his game, despite Firouzja's deciding to meet Giri's Slav with the Exchange Variation, he (Giri) did obtain a meaningful advantage. But...it was not to be. As if holding his own personal correspondence chess tournament, Giri drew a staggering 14 games out of 15, while only winning one - and it wasn't this one.
On the other hand, going undefeated was an impressive accomplishment, one that only Vladislav Artemiev could match. Artemiev "won" the prelims ("won" in scare quotes because prelim scores don't carry over to the k.o. stage; all that's needed from the prelims is to finish in the top half of the tournament table) with an impressive score of 10.5/15, half a point ahead of Magnus Carlsen (whose only loss was to Alireza Firouzja) and a point ahead of Levon Aronian (who lost to Artemiev and, in the last round, to Vidit Gujrathi) and Firouzja. Wesley So, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, and Jan-Krzysztof Duda scored 9 points apiece, and Dominguez finished with 8 points, as already noted.
Pairings for the knockout stage are standard: 1 plays 8, 2 plays 7, etc., with seeds based on one's finish in the prelims. So here's (in bracket order) what we've got to look forward to in the quarterfinals, which start tomorrow (Tuesday):