Magnus Carlsen is on a roll, and the question now is simply this: can anyone stop him? Today Hou Yifan gave it a good shot, but Carlsen ground out the full point - admittedly, with some serious inaccuracies near the end. Still, between the high general quality of his moves and the persistence of his pressure, the women's world champion eventually buckled. This gave Carlsen his fourth win in a row, and enabled him to finally catch Vassily Vasil Ivanchuk in the leader's circle.
Carlsen nearly took that spot all for himself, as Ivanchuk had to struggle for a long time to save a queen ending against Anish Giri. The position was objectively drawn most of the way, but Giri was always better and at one moment could have won thanks to some unobvious play on move 90.
Radoslaw Wojtaszek could have made it a triumvirate, and with the white pieces against tailender Baadur Jobava his chances looked good. Indeed, he was clearly better in a complicated middlegame, but Jobava did a better job of navigating the tactics and eventually even won the game.
Wesley So also had the chance to reach the first-place tie, and had some winning chances against Teimour Radjabov before letting the latter escape in the run-up to the time control. He is thus half a point behind the leaders, as are Ding Liren and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.
Ding Liren shouldn't have been within half a point of the leaders, as he was much worse against Loek van Wely - losing, even, at least two or three times in the game. Most of van Wely's advantage had disappeared by the end of the first time control, but it still seemed as if he'd have the better half of a draw. Somehow, it just didn't pan out, and he even went on to lose the game.
Vachier-Lagrave's win was also a gift, awarded in a single moment. An exciting Najdorf with Ivan Saric had been balanced throughout, and a perpetual check would have resulted after 31.Qc1. Instead, Saric played 31.Rd2??, missing a nice but simple tactic a couple of moves later, which ended the game on the spot.
It's incredible that the only game involving two players who came into the round more than a point behind the leader was between Levon Aronian and Fabiano Caruana. Caruana played the first part of the game well and enjoyed a serious edge. Unfortunately, he has been getting into time trouble throughout the event, and did so once again. This gave Aronian the chance to not only escape but to press, but once Caruana had some more time to think in the second time control he managed to survive.
The tournament site is here, the games (with my comments) are here, and tomorrow's pairings for round 8 are as follows:
In the Challengers' Group, there were six decisive games and the seventh should have been decisive too. Wei Yi beat Jan Timman and David Navara defeated Robin van Kampen; those two winners are tied for first with 5.5/7. Sam Shankland is in clear third with 4.5 points, but he could have 5, as he had a decisive advantage at one point against Salem Saleh. Valentina Gunina upset Erwin l'Ami, Vladimir Potkin bested Anne Haast, Bart Michiels beat Ari Dale and Sam Sevian won against David Klein.