Carlsen and Nakamura top the standings at the end of the Skilling Open Preliminaries - Day 3
Magnus Carlsen and Hikaru Nakamura assured themselves of qualification for the knockout phase of Skilling Open with a round to spare but they were the only players who were so comfortable. Carlsen and Nakamura drew against each other in the first game of the final day, Carlsen beat Vidit in round 13 and drew the rest. Nakamura beat David Anton and Alireza Firouzja in successive rounds and this was enough to qualify. Anish Giri led alone after days one and two but losses to Firouzja and Levon Aronian in rounds 12 and 13 placed his qualification very much in doubt and he had to rely on tie-breaks to qualify in 8th place. Wesley So drew all his games to finish tied in third place with Ian Nepomniachtchi (1 loss 4 draws on the final day) and Levon Aronian (who powered qualification with a 4/5 finish). Teimour Radjabov and Maxime Vachier-Legrave along with Giri went through on tie-break from Alireza Firouzja and Le Quang Liem who both missed out in spite of being tied on 8 points. Ding Liren's 1.5/5 on the final day saw him miss out by half a point.
Final Standings: 1st Carlsen 9pts, 2nd Nakamura 9pts, 3rd So 8.5pts, 4th Nepomniachtchi 8.5pts, 5th Aronian 8.5pts, 6th Radjabov 8pts, 7th MVL 8pts, 8th Giri 8pts, 9th Firouzja 8pts, 10th Le 8pts, 11th Ding 7.5pts, 12th Vidit 6.5pts, 13th Anton 6.5pts, 14th Svidler 6pts, 15th Karjakin 5.5pts, 16th Duda 4.5pts.
Knockout Pairings (matches take place 25th-26th Nov at 5pm GMT): Carlsen vs Giri, Nepomniachtchi vs Aronian, So vs Radjabov and Nakamura vs MVL.