Sinquefield Cup, Round 8: More Draws

Judging only by the numbers, the 2018 Sinquefield Cup is getting to be like a correspondence chess tournament. After eight rounds, only six games out of 40 have finished with a winner. All five games today (as in rounds 5 and 7) were drawn, but it wasn't for a want of effort of opportunity. In three of the games, one player enjoyed at least a clear advantage, so things could easily have turned out different.

The most important of these missed opportunity games featured the leader. Fabiano Caruana was outplaying Viswanathan Anand after 26 moves, but the whole advantage was lost after a single careless move. Had Caruana won this game and all the other games finished as they did, he'd have entered the last round with a full point lead over his closest pursuers. Instead, he keeps a half-point lead over the next four players.

In fact, it could have been three players, as Alexander Grischuk's risky plan with 17.f5 and 18.g4 made it easy for things to go wrong, and when he played 23.gxf5 they did. Wesley So enjoyed an extra pawn for nothing, but as with Caruana, So surrendered his advantage in a single move, on move 30. The third relatively near-miss involved the third U.S. player, Hikaru Nakamura. Sergey Karjakin was in trouble in a sharp Queen's Indian line, but was bailed out when Nakamura went for the tactically tempting 20.Bd5. Instead 20.Bc6 kept Karjakin tied up and in danger of losing his fourth game in the tournament.

In the other games, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov had a pull against Magnus Carlsen after the opening, but after a small oversight the burden had shifted to him to make the draw (which he handled very competently). Finally, Levon Aronian was better with the black pieces in a Berlin ending against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. A win would have given him the share of the lead, but an inaccuracy allowed Vachier-Lagrave to force a draw with an elegant temporary pawn sac on move 25.

The tournament finishes tomorrow unless someone catches (or passes) Caruana; if there is a tie for first the playoff will take place on Tuesday. But first we have round 9 tomorrow, with the following pairings:

• Aronian (4.5) - Grischuk (4.5)
• So (3.5) - Caruana (5)
• Anand (4) - Mamedyarov (4.5)
• Carlsen (4.5) - Nakamura (3)
• Karjakin (2.5) - Vachier-Lagrave (4)

Finally, the round 8 games are here, with my annotations.