A reminder: the preliminary section of the Chessable Masters, as with all the Meltwater Tour events, is only important in a pass/fail sense: a player needs to be in the top eight to qualify for the knockout stage. So while it's terrific for Anish Giri to lead with an impressive, undefeated 9/12, half a point ahead of Ding Liren (also undefeated) and Magnus Carlsen, none of the points will carry over to the knockout.
Tomorrow, they'll play the last three games of the preliminaries, and several players currently on the outside looking in have a shot at making it into the top eight. Here are the full standings:
1. Giri 9 (of 12)
2-3. Ding, Carlsen 8.5
4-5. Mamedyarov, Wei Yi 7.5
6. Anton 7
7. Praggnanandhaa 6.5
8. Harikrishna 6
9. Tari 6 (but critically, behind on the tiebreaks)
10-11. Vidit, Grandelius 5.5
12. Shankland 4.5
13. Hansen 4
14-15. Mishra, Van Foreest 3.5
16. Jones 3
A game that caught my eye - and probably everyone else's - was Carlsen's round 12 game with Wei Yi, featuring 1.h4. The jokey first move aside, it was a rich game, full of content, and both sides can be proud of their play at certain moments in the game. Here it is.