After 9 rounds (of 13) at Wijk aan Zee, there's a four-way tie for first, with two more players just half a point behind.
The game Nakamura-Anand pitted the pre-round leaders against each other, and after an interesting battle the game ended in a draw. Vachier-Lagrave against Carlsen was a face-off of two players who were just half a point behind entering the round, but after a good fight they finished the round the same way.
Two players did bridge that half-point gap, however. Kramnik absolutely flattened L'Ami in a funny game. Kramnik's queenside was disintegrating, but while L'Ami was breaking through there, Kramnik was busy killing his opponent's lonely king. Aronian also made it to the first-place tie, but his route was far more complicated. He and Shirov went at it in a game with one odd material (im-)balance after another, but Shirov finally went astray in the second time control and lost.
If Nepomniachtchi had beaten Smeets, which almost seemed like an automatic result given Smeets' score of half a point in his last six games, he'd have caught Carlsen and Vachier-Lagrave at the leaders' heels. Instead, he laid an egg, with White, no less, and was ground down in an endgame.
In other games, Grischuk-Giri was a confusing draw while Ponomariov missed a relatively simple tactical shot against Wang Hao and lost.
Standings After Round 9:
1-4. Aronian, Anand, Kramnik, Nakamura 6
5-6. Carlsen, Vachier-Lagrave 5.5
7-8. Giri, Nepomniachtchi 4.5
9-10. Ponomariov, Wang Hao 4
11-12. L'Ami, Smeets 3
13-14. Grischuk, Shirov 2.5
Round 10 comes tomorrow, and then the final rest day before the tournament finishes on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Here are tomorrow's pairings:
Anand - Shirov
Giri - Aronian
Ponomariov - Grischuk
L'Ami - Wang Hao
Smeets - Kramnik
Carlsen - Nepomniachtchi
Nakamura - Vachier-Lagrave
On paper Anand and Kramnik have the best chances to win tomorrow, but we'll see. Kramnik has lost to Smeets before, while Shirov might return the favor from last year when Anand wrecked Shirov's bid for first place.
In the B-Group, the standings are almost as bunchy at the top as they are in the A-Group. So's four game winning streak came to an end when he lost (with White) to Li Chao, so he was caught by McShane (who drew) and Sargissian (who won). All three have 6 points, and are half a point ahead of Tkachiev and Efimenko.
In Group C, Vocaturo is starting to put some distance between himself and the field. He won again and has 7.5 points, while Nyzhnyk and Lahno, who drew each other, are 1.5 points behind. As for Sachdev, she lost, so her hopes of a 9-round GM norm were dashed. (Perhaps if she wins her next two games, she'll get one based on 11 games.)
Update: The games are here, and they're all annotated now.