Entering the last round of the 2020 Russian Championship (or the Russian Extreme Mega Stupendous Superfinal, or whatever they're calling it this year) Ian Nepomniachtchi and Sergey Karjakin were tied for first, with Vladimir Fedoseev a point behind. All three leaders had the black pieces, making the first order of business not losing rather than winning.
Indeed, none of the players managed to win, and in Nepo's case, he didn't even try. His game with Maksim Chigaev wasn't exactly a barn-burner: 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be3 Ng4 7.Bc1 Nf6 8.Be3 Ng4 9.Bc1 Nf6 10.Be3 and draw.
That rendered the result of the game between Andrey Esipenko and Fedoseev meaningless with respect to the battle for first many hours before their game wound up drawn (in 73 moves), so all that was left was Karjakin's game with Dubov. And what a game it was! Dubov, whose exceptional creativity in the opening (as elsewhere) has been praised even by Magnus Carlsen, trotted out a very rare line of the Italian against Karjakin, leading to an absolute mess. The line may not be a problem for a computer, but it was more than enough of a problem for the former world championship finalist. Karjakin was soon befuddled, Dubov won a great game, and Nepomniachtchi won the championship. (Dubov-Karjakin, with my annotations, is here.)
Congratulations to Ian Nepomniachtchi, whose victory came against a very strong field, as you'll see from the final standings:
1. Nepomniachtchi 7.5 (out of 11)
2. Karjakin 7
3-4. Fedoseev, Dubov 6.5
5-6. Chigaev, Artemiev 6
7-8. Vitiugov, Svidler 5.5
9-10. Esipenko, Matlakov 5
11. Goganov 3.5
12. Antipov 2 (But it was 2/6; he withdrew at that point.)