Day 6 of the Tech Mahindra Global Chess League Season 4 brings four matches to The Lalit Ashok in Bengaluru on Thursday, starting at 3:30 PM IST. Twenty-four games were played here on Wednesday. Sixteen of them ended with at least one player under a minute, and ten with someone under ten seconds.

That is what the format does. Twenty minutes, and the two-second increment does not arrive until after move 40, so every game that survives the middlegame becomes a race to reach a move number. Day 5 was decided there, not in the opening. Day 6 is where it starts to cost teams their season.

Day 5 results

Standings after Day 5

Alpine and Ganges are the only teams with a match in hand. Both play twice on Thursday. They open against each other.

3:30 PM: Alpine APL Pipers v Ganges Grandmasters

Carlsen against Nepomniachtchi, second meeting, and this time both teams are chasing the same two seats.

The Pipers won the first one 11-6 on Day 2, but the top board that afternoon went the other way: Nepomniachtchi reached a two-pawn advantage against Carlsen and could not finish it.

Carlsen was more clinical on Wednesday. Against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave he came out of a 3.Bb5+ Sicilian with steady pressure, traded queens on move 30 and won on the spot with 31.Ne5+, a knight fork picking up the rook on a7. He did it with three minutes eighteen on his clock against his opponent's five minutes nine, which is the Carlsen of this event in one line: behind on time, ahead on everything else.

Below him, Anish Giri went hunting. Against Pranesh M, who beat him in round one, he pushed 6.g4 on move six, sacrificed a knight on g5 on move twelve and gave up the bishop on g5 again six moves later. It finished on move 27 with 27.Qd8+.

Ganges arrive off a stranger day. They beat Triveni 15-3 with three wins on the bottom half and three draws above, and two of those wins came from positions they were losing. Stavroula Tsolakidou beat Alexandra Kosteniuk in 63 moves with one second left on Kosteniuk's clock and nine on her own. Polina Shuvalova beat Zhu Jiner in 47.

Colours are settled by toss, and it matters: a win with Black pays four game points, a win with White three.

The question: Ganges have twice won matches from losing positions. Against the team with the best top board in the league, does the swindle still work?

5:00 PM: CheQ Mumba Masters v Triveni Continental Kings

Firouzja played both his Day 5 games down to six seconds, and lost the one that counted.

That is not a figure of speech. Against Nepomniachtchi in the afternoon he finished with six seconds on his clock while Nepomniachtchi still had over two and a half minutes. Against Javokhir Sindarov at 8 PM he finished with six seconds again, having burned more than seven of his twenty minutes on a single move, 10...Qe6. From move twenty onwards he never had ninety seconds. Sindarov, who had ten minutes at that stage, said afterwards that his opponent had thought too long and missed tactics. The clock times back him up exactly.

Triveni are last on 6 match points with three matches left. Their maximum is 15, and three teams already have 12. A loss here caps them at 12 and hands their season to other people's results.

The Mumba Masters have their own wound. Carissa Yip was completely winning against Nino Batsiashvili on board five and played her 39th move with nothing left on the clock, one move short of where the increment begins. That single flag turned an 11-6 into a loss and made it two defeats in a day.

Their first meeting on Day 2 finished Kings 9, Masters 10.

The question: both teams are running out of clock in the wider sense. Which one plays like it knows?

6:30 PM: Alpine APL Pipers v PBG Alaskan Knights

PBG have beaten this team already, 9-7 on Day 3, and they are winning games in the only place that has been reliable this week: the last two minutes.

Both their Day 5 wins came there. Batsiashvili won on time on board five. On board six, Abhimanyu Mishra was offered a way out and turned it into a win: Bardiya Daneshvar had a repetition available at move 36 and declined it with 37.Qc7, needing more than a draw for his team. The game ran to move 67, through a queen ending played entirely on the two-second increment, and Mishra won it. Both players finished under ten seconds.

Viswanathan Anand is still the board everyone watches and still without a win on it. Against Vachier-Lagrave he traded queens on move thirteen and defended a rook endgame for another fifty moves before it broke, finishing with three seconds left. On Day 4 he lost to Nepomniachtchi and Sindarov.

For the Pipers this is the back half of a double, and their week already contains a 4-10 loss to Triveni.

The question: the Pipers have not put together a clean two-match day all season. Is this the one?

8:00 PM: Ganges Grandmasters v FYERS American Gambits

Nepomniachtchi has already beaten Sindarov this season, and he did it on the clock too.

That was Day 2, when Sindarov lost on time and the Gambits took their first defeat, 7-9. Sindarov has since become the most reliable player in the league. His win over Firouzja on Wednesday was the only decisive game in an 8-5 match, with Nihal Sarin, Daniil Dubov and Marc'Andria Maurizzi all drawing from better positions. He faces Gukesh for the world title in Geneva later this year.

The Gambits' shape is two wins, three losses, two wins. Ganges have won four of six and could walk in here having already beaten the Pipers at 3:30.

The question: Nepomniachtchi took the first one on the clock. Sindarov has spent the week winning on it.

What Day 6 settles

Alpine or Ganges can reach 18 match points from eight matches with two still to play, which would put a place in the final close to secure. Two losses and they have spent the match in hand for nothing, with a Gambits side that needs only one win at 8 PM to lead alone.

Triveni need everything, starting at 5 PM.

First move 3:30 PM IST.