One round remains in the ongoing Grand Prix event in Thessaloniki, and thanks to his win today Gata Kamsky enjoys a half point lead over Leinier Dominguez. Kamsky beat Alexander Morozevich, who managed three serious errors out of his 24 moves. (It seems that more and more of the games are being marred by serious errors, sometimes by both players, which suggests a degree of fatigue. Or maybe it's the beauty of Greece itself!) Kamsky won quickly and convincingly, but missed a chance to win even sooner. 17...Nxb2 was a real stinker, and Kamsky could have capitalized immediately with the natural and obvious 18.Nd5. (I'm sure he saw it; the question is what he overlooked in his analysis.) Anyway, he soon got a second chance, and Morozevich had to resign, faced with massive material loss and checkmate likely to come soon afterward.
If Dominguez had beaten Alexander Grischuk, he would have remained tied for first. With Black that would have been a tough order, and a draw was a very reasonable result. It was a very sharp, even crazy game with Dominguez sacrificing material and both players attacking. This accurately played game finished in a perpetual.
The third game with relevance to the first-place standings was a real mess, with Fabiano Caruana outlasting Veselin Topalov in a hard-fought and mistake-filled game. This was a very important result, as Caruana remains alive in the hunt for first place, and gets the white pieces against Kamsky in the last round, while Dominguez will have White against Topalov. Here are the full pairings:
Note to those of you who may want to watch the last round live: the games start two hours earlier than usual, at noon Greek time/11:00 a.m. CET/5 a.m. ET.