The Week in Chess

Levon Aronian drew an interesting game against Viswanathan Anand which proved enough to keep a one point lead over the rest of the field going into the final round. Anand allowed Aronian a big centre but had carefully prepared the line and convinced himself it would be OK and this proved to be the case at least in this game.

Magnus Carlsen quickly built an overwhelming positional advantage against Hikaru Nakamura but in a "moment of madness" he allowed Nakamura to escape to a drawn endgame. Nakamura claimed a draw by threefold repetition incorrectly but this only postponed the drawn result.

Fabiano Caruana drew with Anish Giri in a game that was heading for a draw before Giri dropped a pawn. Giri however seemed to know more about the resulting endgame than Caruana and held comfortably.

Alexander Grischuk was pleased with his new idea against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave but praised his opponents' accuracy in managing to defuse it in a well played drawn game.

Wesley So ended up with more time after move 40 than he started with in a theoretical discussion with Veselin Topalov but the game was drawn all the same.

Round 8 Standings: Aronian 5.5pts/8. Giri, Grischuk, Carlsen, Vachier-Lagrave 4.5pts, Topalov, Nakamura 4pts, Caruana, Anand 3pts, So 2.5pts

Final Round 9 pairings Tuesday 1st Sept: Topalov-Aronian, Anand-Carlsen, Vachier-Lagrave-Giri, Nakamura-Grischuk, Caruana-So There will be a playoff on Wednesday if Aronian is caught but this seems unlikely.