2019 Gibraltar, Round 8: Artemiev, Navara, and Alekseenko Lead
0
4
Vladislav Artemiev drew with Levon Aronian in round 8, the antepenultimate round of the 2019 Gibraltar Masters, allowing two other players to catch up to him. One was David Navara, who put the brakes on what had been an outstanding tournament for Nils Grandelius, and the other was Kirill Aleseenko, who won a wild up-and-down battle with Arkadij Naiditsch. (Naiditsch, as I recall seeing somewhere, was the 2700 with the lowest drawing percentage in 2018 - by far. It was something ridiculously low like 28%.)
12 players are half a point behind entering round 9, which feature the following leading pairings:
- 1. Artemiev (6.5) - Navara (6.5)
- 2. Vachier-Lagrave (6) - Alekseenko (6.5)
- 3. Saric (6) - Aronian (6)
- 4. Yu (6) - Le (6)
- 5. Howell (6) - Nakamura (6)
- 6. Anton (6) Vitiugov (6)
- 7. Karthikeyan (6) - Matlakov (6)
- 8. Lalith (6) - So (5.5)