Hikaru Nakamura put his little hiccup against David Howell behind him, and by defeating Yu Yangyi he has extended his lead in the Gibraltar Masters Open to a full point with two rounds to go. Yu Yangyi beat both Anish Giri and Vladimir Kramnik in the closing rounds of the Qatar Masters back in December, but this time he was stopped by the leader and favorite. Nakamura played a sideline of the 2.c3 Sicilian with White, and it worked very well. Yu surrendered the bishop pair without any clear justification, and a few moves later Black came under a permanent positional attack. It is very hard to defend a chronically weak position without letting something slip, and that's what finally happened. (The game, with my notes, can be replayed here.)
Meanwhile, most of Nakamura's closest pursuers drew their games. Axel Bachmann drew with Howell, Daniel Naroditsky drew with Nikita Vitiugov, Peter Svidler drew with Hou Yifan, and on it went. The top pairings for the penultimate round, round 9, are as follows:
There are 16 players with 6 points, including Veselin Topalov and Peter Svidler, but their fate is no longer in their own hands. If Nakamura wins tomorrow and the board two game is drawn, he will clinch clear first with a round to spare. And if he wins out, he will not only take first in the tournament; he'll also join the select but growing club of players to reach 2800. While we're on the subject of ratings, Wei Yi is still over 2700 (2700.8!) while Hou Yifan is putting a little distance between herself and Judit Polgar, as she's now 2680.1, 5.1 points clear of her great predecessor. (That's still a shade less than 55 points below Polgar's peak official rating, so there's still a ways to go before that record falls.)