The Grand Chess Tour in Leuven: So Wins the Rapid Portion

This is just the halfway point of the Grand Chess Tour event in Leuven, Belgium; like last week's GCT tournament in Paris, there's both a rapid and a blitz component. That event was won by Magnus Carlsen in a tiebreak over Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, and both players are in the hunt this time, too. MVL is in second with 12/18 while Carlsen is in third with 11 (meaning 6 and 5.5 out of 9 on traditional scoring, but since the rapid games are weighted twice relative to the blitz games the rapid scores are doubled). The leader, however, is Wesley So, who bounced back from a poor performance in Paris. He has gone undefeated, scoring 14 points. Better still, for him and his fans, he reversed what had been a dismal trend this year of losing almost every game to Carlsen, something rather one-sidedly; he defeated the world champion when Carlsen overpressed.

There are still 18 games left - a pair of round robins over the next two days, with Sunday's rounds reversing the colors of Saturday's games - so no one is out of contention for first. Or rather, only one player is out of contention: wildcard participant Baadur Jobava, who drew Anish Giri in round 8 and lost the other eight games. Here are the standings so far:

1. So 14 (out of 18; = 7/9 on traditional scoring)
2. Vachier-Lagrave 12
3. Carlsen 11
4. Giri 10
5-7. Aronian, Kramnik, Nepomniachtchi 9
8. Anand 8
9. Ivanchuk 7
10. Jobava 1