After yesterday’s bloodbath, there was more solidity in today’s action. Five of the seven games were drawn, and only one of those looked likely to see a winner. That game was a big one: Fabiano Caruana was close to a win with Black against Sam Sevian. Sevian did a pretty good job of not making things worse, though, and managed to escape into a drawish ending a pawn down.
This gave Caruana’s nearest rival, Ray Robson, the chance to close to within half a point - and he took it. Robson’s opponent was the unfortunate Elshan Moradiabadi, who is firmly entrenched in last place. It’s not clear what Moradiabadi missed, as he made his big error on move 25 quickly, and kept playing quickly after that. Whatever he got wrong, it was irreparable, and Robson had no trouble finishing him off. (About Robson: I failed to mention yesterday that he broke the 2700 barrier for the first time in his career after his win in round 7; now he’s up to 2706.7. Nice job!)
The day’s only other winner was Jeffery Xiong, who was the recipient of an odd blunder by Christopher Yoo. I don’t see what 23.c4 was supposed to prevent, avoid, or accomplish; it looks like it blunders a pawn for absolutely nothing, and that’s what the engine says as well. Yoo’s subsequent moves were played almost immediately, and several moves later the game went into a knight ending where Black’s extra pawn and Yoo’s perpetually vulnerable g-pawn made Xiong’s winning advantage completely obvious. Weird. (Maybe Yoo was getting help from Chess Challenger 10?)
With the win Xiong joined a tie for third place with Dariusz Swiercz, Sevian, Awonder Liang, and Leinier Dominguez. They trail Robson by a point and Caruana by a point and a half with five rounds remaining.
The tournament site is here, today’s games (with my comments to the two decisive games and Sevian-Caruana) are here, and these are the pairings for round 9:
Xiong (4.5) - Aronian (3)
Shankland (4) - Yoo (3.5)
Caruana (6) - Liang (4.5)
Dominguez (4.5) - Sevian (4.5)
Robson (5.5) - Lenderman (3.5)
Swiercz (4.5) - Moradiabadi (1.5)
Niemann (3) - So (3.5)
When I was watching the Yoo game I wondered if he'd played 23.c4 with the idea of 26.Nxb7 Kxb7 27. Rxd6, missing of course that 26...Nxb7 is available. That has all the qualities of an explicable blunder: it's hard to see that a black knight could end up on b7 from the initial position, and backwards piece moves are notoriously an area for blindspots. Of course, Yoo is going to see that 99 times out of 100, but it's in the realm of the explicable, though missing 25...Nb6 as well perhaps undercuts that.