After the final tournament, concluded a week ago, Magnus Carlsen was declared the winner of both the London leg and the Tour as a whole. This last was due entirely to the most asinine tie-breaks ever used in the history of Chess. (Yes, I am including the time a Roulette wheel was used to settle the outcome of a Candidates Match between Huebner and Smyslov.) You can read about that The Chess Mind, in the perfectly named post Grand Chess Tour Tiebreaks: A System Than Which None Lesser Can Be Conceived.
The upshot is this: Despite only finishing on +1 for the tour, Carlsen finished first in the overall standings, ahead of Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (+2), Hikaru Nakamure (+3) and Anish Giri (+5). To add to the absurdity, Carlsen finished behind or tied with Giri and MVL in all three stages of the tour, yet still finished ahead of them in the standings! (Call Magnus the Tortoise of Chess.)
MVL really got hosed more than once, though. As recounted elsewhere, despite beating Giri in a tiebreak, he actually finished behind Giri in London. All these tiebreak shenanigans resulted in MVL missing out on qualifying for next year's Grand Chess Tour. So, not only does he get lesser prizes than deserved this year, he will miss out on next year's Tour as well, meaning he will miss three of the best (and most lucrative) tournaments of the year, plus whatever money he might have won for his placement in the tour next year.
This is an egregious ... hmm, how to put this without using foul language? This is an egregious mistreatment of a player for playing well. But the Grand Chess Tour had already set a precedent for this when they didn't invite Karjakin this year, despite Karjakin having won the first two editions of the Stavangar Tournament ahead of Magnus Carlsen. So at least the GCT is consistent!
What a joke.
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