Sinquefield Cup, Round 7: Caruana Narrowly Survives Against Carlsen, Continues to Lead As All Games Are Drawn

While more than half the field remained in contention for first entering the round, the only game most fans really cared about was the world championship preview between Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana. Caruana entered the round half a point of Carlsen and three other contenders, but had to face him with the black pieces.

It has been an interesting year for the two. Since Caruana won the Candidates in March they've played three times. The first game was in the Grenke Chess Classic several days after the Candidates. Caruana had white, the game was drawn, and Caruana won the tournament a full point ahead of Carlsen. Then they played twice in Norway, once in blitz (that was to determine pairings) and once in the "real" event. Carlsen had white in both games and won both games. He finished ahead of Caruana in the blitz event, but in the main event Caruana again won the tournament and again finished ahead of Carlsen. Reminiscent of Vladimir Kramnik and Garry Kasparov back in 2000, the two players were #1 and #2 in the world, but the player who did better against the rest of the world (Kasparov then, Caruana now) did worse in the critical head to head matchup against his main rival.

So how would Caruana fare this time? Would he manage to hold on with Black, preserving his lead in the tournament and his confidence heading into the match? And what if he won? That would not only be a huge boost to his confidence, but would be an epochal moment on the rating list, marking the first time since 2010 or 2011 that anyone passed Carlsen for the #1 spot. On the other hand, a Carlsen win would be great for his confidence and bad for Caruana's, and would let the world champion leapfrog the challenger into at least a tie for first.

As it turned out, Caruana could feel satisfied with the result but little else. Carlsen had a little surprise for Caruana in the opening, and he was able to parlay the resulting edge into a winning queenless middlegame with shocking ease. Everything was going swimmingly, but maybe Carlsen counted his chickens too quickly. (At one point Carlsen took a bizarre trip to the "Confessional" booth where he didn't say anything, just put his finger to his lips in a "shh" gesture, as if quieting Caruana's fans. Classy. I guess he could have chosen more tasteless gestures, so we have something to be thankful for.) Caruana found some nice defensive resources, and while Carlsen didn't make any major, overt errors a string of inaccuracies allowed his opponent to sneak out with a draw.

The remaining games finished in draws, with no one missing any major opportunities (at least none that I noticed). The games are here (I've only annotated Carlsen-Caruana), and tomorrow's pairings for the penultimate round look like this:

• Vachier-Lagrave (3.5) - Aronian (4)
• Nakamura (2.5) - Karjakin (2)
• Mamedyarov (4) - Carlsen (4)
• Caruana (4.5) - Anand (3.5)
• Grischuk (4) - So (3)