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Fabi wins today against Firouzja to clinch the GCT (Credit to Lennart Ootes for the photo).

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Prior to the Sinquefield cup, Fabi with 33 GCT points had a huge 11 point lead over MVL with 22. After Duda withdrew, the only path for MVL to even tie Fabi would be if MVL won CLEAR first. ( No tiebreaks) AND Fabi got clear last.After round 6 though, this is no longer possible. Here's my math. Feel free to correct it if I missed something.

Firstly, here are the standings of 4 relevant players.

So, if Fabi has to finish last and MVL had to finish first, we want Wesley and Fabi to both go down in the standings. But the issue is that in the next round, they play each other.

If Fabi wins this encounter, he goes up to a 2, which means that even if he loses both his next 2 games, he would still end up on 50%, and it is mathematically impossible to come clear last in a round-robin with a 50% score.

If Wesley wins this encounter, he will have at least 5 points, which means MVL can only tie him even with 2 wins, and MVL needs CLEAR first.

So, the only remaining option would be that this game ends in a draw, in which case Wesley moves up to a 4.5/6, which MVL can overtake ONLY by winning both his next 2 games, assuming Wesley also loses his final game.

Okay, so we have established that the Fabi-So game has to end in a draw, and that MVL has to win both of his next 2 games. Sadly, it won't be enough

Fabi, even if he loses his 2 games after drawing Wesley, will still end up on 3.5/8 which is not enough for last place because Firouzja is simply too far behind.

Why? Well, we have established that MVL has to win both of his next 2 games to have a chance of overtaking Wesley, right? Well, in round 9 MVL faces Firouzja himself. So by winning that game, MVL would ensure that Firouzja finishes last instead of Fabi, which would be all that Fabi needs to take the GCT crown.

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So yeah, let me know if I've missed something, but it seems pretty clear that Fabi has got this in the bag. This would be Fabi's first ever GCT win. Meanwhile MVL can still aim for a second place finish.

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