It wasn't all that long ago that Magnus Carlsen's championship reign and his spot atop the rating list were in jeopardy. It wasn't that long ago according to the calendar, but the current reality is that he is the dominant #1 player in the world. After a sluggish start to Wijk aan Zee in January, he has turned on the afterburners, and with his fourth win in this event he has clinched clear first place in the 2019 Gashimov Memorial with a round to spare.
His victim in this round was Sergey Karjakin, who entered the round just half a point behind Carlsen. Karajkin had White, too, making the matchup all the more interesting. He decided to join the crowd testing Carlsen's world championship prep in the Sveshnikov Sicilian, continuing the recent trend with 7.Nd5. Carlsen sacrificed the h-pawn for compensation, and absolutely hammered Karjakin to death with powerful play on the kingside and in the center. Some of what happened to Karjakin had to do with Carlsen's preparation, I think, but not all of it, and Carlsen's play was very convincing.
Congrats to the champion, who leads Karjakin, Alexander Grischuk, and Ding Liren by a point and a half. He has picked up a dozen rating points so far, and has achieved a 2963 TPR thus far. I don't know if it'll hit 3000 if he defeats Grischuk in the last round, but it will be close.
About Grischuk and Ding, they also won in round 8. In Grischuk's case, he won convincingly with White against David Navara; as for Ding, his win over Veselin Topalov was remarkable. Topalov was a pawn down in a rook ending, with all the pawns on the same side of the board, and his somewhat shaky play was still good enough to reach an ending of knight vs. rook, with no pawns on either side. It's generally drawn when the king isn't in the corner and the knight isn't cut off, but it was an in-between situation where the draw was precarious, not trivial. Ding did a great job of making Topalov's task difficult, and he eventually cracked.
The other two games were drawn. In the case of Teimour Radjabov and Viswanathan Anand, it was a short, correct draw, but the battle between Anish Giri and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov was anything but correct. Giri was winning practically out of the opening (18.e5 would have kept a decisive advantage), but let the advantage drip away, and near the end he was even in some trouble. Fortunately for him Mamedyarov's inaccurate 39th move let Giri off the hook.
(The games are here, with my notes to Carlsen's and Ding's wins.) One round remains, and here are the pairings: