It's too soon to say that the Candidates' tournament is finished and Viswanathan Anand is the winner, but round 9 was a huge step in that direction. Anand defeated Veselin Topalov, outplaying him on the white side of a Najdorf Sicilian. Meanwhile, Levon Aronian was outplayed by the resilient Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (if only he had finished off Vladimir Kramnik he'd be right there in the hunt!) while Kramnik blundered against Sergey Karjakin on move 7(!!) and lost as well. (The game between Dmitry Andreikin and Peter Svidler was a short draw.)
So what this means is that with five rounds to go Anand leads Aronian by a point and Kramnik by a point and a half. But that's not quite right, at least with respect to Aronian. He has a point more than his rival, but in fact his lead is greater than a point and less than a point and a half. Because Anand won their head-to-head matchup, he wins the tournament if they finish with the same score and have more points than everyone else. Thus (ignoring the rest of the field for the moment) Aronian must outscore Anand by a point and a half over the last five rounds to win. Not impossible, but a difficult task - especially with Anand having three white games in the remaining five.
I'm sorry to report that due to other responsibilities I won't have time to analyze any games until next weekend, but you can at least replay today's games here. Tomorrow is a rest day, and here are the pairings for round 10, on Tuesday (as usual, player scores are in parentheses):