Magnus is (so far) the favorite against any chess player. At the moment, Magnus is number 1 in the FIDE rating, and Ivanchuk is 66th. The difference in ratings is 163 points, which implies an 80% chance that Magnus will win, and given that this is not a separate game, the chances are close to 99%. It's just math, no disrespect.
Yup- I understand completely and I apologize if my tone sounded too harsh. I do agree, the difference in rating is really staggering given that we are in the era of chess engines but Magnus can still defeat Super GMs as if they are nothing. I guess what really separates him is his endgame skills and mastery of the game.
Magnus is obviously Magnus. You will rarely see him actually getting defeated, losing to Duda was also a big exception that we saw, but yes Abasov will be pretty happy on this, playing candidates is in itself a big thing for him. If it would have been before the quarters of Pragg vs Arjun I would have said, Fabi will take it. But Pragg played so well in tie breakers in quarters I doubt it'll be easy to take him down. It'll be a big test of Fabi and even a small mistake can cost him the ticket to finals.
As much as I want Prag to win, I do want to see a finals between Fabi vs Magnus; like they are re-creating their 2018 WCC where both Fabi and Magnus drew all of their 14 games with each other. What really made a difference is when they switched the time format from classical to a faster time format (rapid + blitz) where Magnus dominated Fabi.