Sinquefield Cup, Round 7

FIrouzja wins again, leads by a full point.

The Sinquefield Cup may not yet be decided, but the hour is getting late. It’s even later for the overall Grand Chess Tour, and for all I know Alireza Firouzja has clinched overall victory there. (If not, he’s on the verge.) Firouzja defeated Ding Liren today, while Fabiano Caruana - his closest pursuer both in the tournament and in the overall Tour standings - was unable to grind out a win against Gukesh D. As a result Firouzja’s 5/7 has him in clear first, a full point ahead of Caruana and a point and a half ahead of the large chase group with just two rounds to play.

Firouzja’s game with Ding was no masterpiece. Both sides made plenty of mistakes, but the most important thing is that Firouzja made his bad moves (and his good moves, too) fairly quickly, while Ding took much longer to make his mistakes. After Firouzja’s 29th move he was a little better, but the more important matter is that he had something like half an hour left on the clock while Ding was down to three and a half minutes for the rest of the game (not counting the 30-second increment after every move). Ding’s reply was an all-around terrible move, blundering a pawn or two without obtaining any positional gains in return. The win brought him to a gaudy +3 and brought him back to #5 in the world.

Two players were half a point behind him entering the round, and neither won. Wesley So lost badly to Nodirbek Abdusattorov: poor prep left him with an unpleasant middlegame, and things only went downhill from there. It was an easy win for Abdusattorov, who thereby made it back to 50% - where he has been joined by So. As for Caruana, he was always pressing against Gukesh, and he was gifted with one opportunity when the current World Championship challenger played 38…Reg7. Unfortunately for the American, he failed to find 39.Rxf6 (or rejected it), and Gukesh had little trouble saving the game after that.

The other two games were short, conventional draws. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave got nothing with White against Anish Giri’s Berlin, and they drew by repetition after 32 moves. Praggnanandhaa R. burned some clock trying to find something he liked against Ian Nepomniachtchi’s Petroff sideline, but didn’t manage. In fact, he didn’t even manage to get Nepo out of his prep, and when they called it a draw by repetition after a mere 19 moves Nepo had three minutes more than when he started.

Here are today’s games, with my comments, and these are the pairings for round 8:

Praggnanandhaa (3.5) - Caruana (4)

Nepomniachtchi (3) - Firouzja (5)

Ding (3) - Abdusattorov (3.5)

So (3.5) - Vachier-Lagrave (3.5)

Giri (2.5) - Gukesh (3.5)