MVL takes second place in the Candidates on the final day - 14

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave's Candidates campaign finished with a win against Wang Hao and secured second place on his own half a point behind the winner Ian Nepomniachtchi. MVL played a theoretical Ruy Lopez Berlin against Wang Hao which both players knew. At some stage Wang forgot the precise moves he should play and his position collapsed fairly quickly.

Winner Ian Nepomniachtchi lost a razor sharp King's Indian to Ding Liren, he explained that the losing move 14...Nxd3 was misremembered from a "slightly different line". Ding was just winning after this mistake and got back to 50%.

Anish Giri could still have caught Nepomniachtchi on point but he suffered a disappointing loss to Kirill Alekseenko in what looked like the Russian's best game of the entire event. Giri didn't get much from the opening and was gradually outplayed until he miscalculated something and lost.

The final game to finish was a sharp struggle between Fabiano Caruana and Alexander Grischuk, this was drawn in 65 moves. Grischuk thought he was doing fine until he noticed that there might be chances to finish in 3rd place and starting with 22...Kf6 he started to get into trouble. After this he did defend well and the game was a roughly balanced.

Final Round 14 Standings: 1st Nepomniachtchi 8.5pts, 2nd MVL 8pts, 3rd Giri 7.5pts, 4th Caruana 7.5pts, 5th Ding Liren 7pts, 6th Grischuk 7pts, 7th Alekseenko 5.5pts, 8th Wang Hao 5pts.