(I guess I shouldn't call the tournament "Wijk aan Zee" now that they've turned it into a travelling circus, but that is the tournament's traditional location, it gives the event a continuity that outlasts its various sponsors, and the present sponsor's name induces titters for those familiar with English slang. So "Wijk aan Zee" it is. On with the report!)
Round 9 has just about put an end to the drama that was the race for first. Levon Aronian entered the round with a slim half-point lead over Sergey Karjakin, and they were paired in this round. As they are also playing in the Candidates tournament in March, this was a psychologically important duel as well. It worked out swimmingly for Aronian. He had the white pieces, which surely helped, and was able to obtain sustained pressure against his younger opponent. The critical moment came after Aronian's 30.Rbc1. Karjakin finally had the chance to equalize, but doing so required the counterintuitive sequence 30...Rfe8 31.Qh4 g5. Black instead gave up a pawn to break White's bind, but a few exchanges later the result was a winning pawn-up ending for Aronian, and he converted his advantage into a win.
The loss left Karjakin a point and a half behind Aronian with two rounds to go, and no one is any closer to the leader. Three other players are tied with Karjakin with 5.5 points: Anish Giri (who drew on the black side of an interesting London System against Richard Rapport), Fabiano Caruana (who also drew with Black, against Hikaru Nakamura), and Leinier Dominguez (drew with Black against Boris Gelfand).
Two other players are another half a point behind, and they both won their games. Penteala Harikrishna blew Arkadij Naiditsch and his Veresov/London System/Barry hybrid off the board in just 19 moves, while Wesley So put a stop to Loek van Wely's rally with a win on the white side of a Classical King's Indian. (At one time van Wely had a veritable grudge match going against Teimour Radjabov trying to prove that the King's Indian was unsound; it appears he has come over to the "dark side".)
The players have a final rest day tomorrow, and then they'll finish up the tournament over the weekend. (The B-Group - a.k.a. the Challengers - had its final rest day today.) When they resume on Saturday, it will be with these pairings (player scores are given in parentheses):
The tournament site is here, and the games (mostly unannotated, but with some remarks to the Aronian-Karjakin and Naiditsch-Harikrishna games) are here.