8 players pile up at the top in Gibraltar

Two of the eight players left in the competition are Indians, Pentala Harikrishna and SP Sethuraman and there could be a strange case of eight or more joint leaders after the 10th and last round and stranger still a play-off for the first place is allowed as per the rules only for the top four players. 

Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Etienne Bacrot, Sebastien Maze (all France),David Anton Guijjaro (Spain), Li Chao (China) and top seed Hikaru Nakamura (USA) who all pile up at the top with the two Indians with seven points each. 

The four leaders from Round 8 drew in Round 9 and four players from the next score group moved up with wins. Vachier-Lagrave and Bacrot drew in 30 moves in a rook and pawn ending. Guijjaro sacrificed an exchange against Harikrishna for a pawn to get a strong initiative. Hari had to give back the exchange remaining a pawn down.The Spaniard had many chances but when he allowed a Queen ending and the exchange of it, there was only a draw for him. 

Hikaru Nakamura, who won the event last year quite comfortably, finally got to where he belonged, in the lead, with  a ninth-round win against India’s Abhijeet Gupta. He won easily, after gaining a useful advantage from the opening and Abhijeet hastened the end with an unsound sacrifice. 

Li Chao kept an extra pawn after his opponent Lenic gave it for some initiative in the Reti Opening. The Chinese outplayed his opponent and won. 

Sethuraman beat Radoslaw Wojtaszek, Anand’s second in World championship, in 37 moves of Ruy Lopez. Wojtasek lost an exchange after the exchange of Queens and then went a full piece up when his opponent went for simplification. Anand staged a late rally to beat Dmitry Kollars of Germany to reach 5.5 points.