The Week in Chess

Wesley So took a quick draw against Fabiano Caruana in the eighth round of the Sinquefield Cup. So was concerned with his tricky finish against Caruana and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and played very solidly, Caruana tired from his marathon against Ding Liren was not in a position to resist.

The results of round 8 has led to a compacting of the field. If the results go a certain way in round 9 up to seven players can tie for first and qualify for a playoff on Monday.

Ding the other player in the marathon was surprised by MVL and had to take a solid approach rather than accept a pawn and that game was quickly drawn too.

Viswanathan Anand almost got himself into trouble against Veselin Topalov in trying to press for a win but the game stayed objectively more or less equal and finished in a draw.

Levon Aronian defeated Hikaru Nakamura in a Bf4 Queen's Gambit. Nakamura said he hadn't initally inrended to play this opening but was sick the night before and wanted to play solidly. Aronian had a nice advantage out of the opening and even though he didn't finish things quickly he got there in the end.

Peter Svidler was extremely relieved to win his game against Anish Giri. Svidler turned the game round to his advantage just before the first time control and won a pawn, this became two later on but Giri continued to resist and 54...e5 complicated his task greatly. Svidler eventually found a way to transpose to a winning Rook and Pawn vs Rook endgame. Svidler didn't want to think about how he would have felt if he hadn't won.

Round 8 Standings: So 5pts, Anand, Aronian, Topalov, 4.5pts, Caruana, MVL, Ding 4pts, Nakamura 3.5pts, Giri, Svidler 3pts.

Final Round 9 14th Aug 2016 7pm UK time: Topalov-Aronian, Svidler-Anand, Caruana-Giri, MVL-So, Nakamura-Ding