The tension ramps up as the draws continue. Happy day-after-Thanksgiving, readers, and please excuse my Thanksgiving-related delay in posting about this game.
It was Fabiano Caruana's turn to play White, and as in game 8 it was a Sveshnikov Sicilian. The first 11 moves were repeated, and then Caruana varied from 12.Bd2 with 12.b4, immediately implementing the typical plan of queenside expansion. Magnus Carlsen went for a blocking plan with 12...a6 followed by 13...a5, and then started his kingside play on move 16.
The race was on, initially in White's favor, and on move 24 Caruana missed the one and only chance either player had in this game. Instead of the defensively-minded 24.g3 he should have greedily grabbed a pawn with 24.Bxb5. The point is not so much to take a pawn as to make the a-pawn a beast. Missing (or more likely, rejecting) this one opportunity, the game remained tense and complicated almost to the very end, but both players showed excellent form. A complicated middlegame gave way to a tricky and unbalanced double rook ending, and only well into the second time control did it fizzle out to a draw. (My analysis of the game can be replayed here.)
The players have a rest day today, and the penultimate game takes place tomorrow (Saturday). After that the usual pattern is broken and there will be one more rest day before the last game on Monday. (Or rather, the last game if the match doesn't finish in a tie. If it does there will be one more rest day followed by tiebreaks on Wednesday.)