At last, there is some stratification at the Superbet Chess Classic. In round 6, the leading triumvirate lost one of its members, and now Shakhriyar Mamedyarov is alone in first place with two rounds to go, thanks to his third consecutive win and Alexander Grischuk's loss.
Today's action saw three decisive games, none of which featured Romanian players. Mamedyarov defeated no less a player than Fabiano Caruana, and with the black pieces. White played 4.d3 against the Berlin, and his subsequent 0-0 and h3 may have reminded Shakh of Aronian-Kramnik from the 2018 Candidates. He reacted similarly, and while the play continued in a different fashion than that earlier game the plan of ...g5 and ...Rg8 also struck paydirt. That said, while Kramnik's version was correct (and something he prepared long before), Caruana did have an opportunity to punish Mamedyarov's clever but ad hoc idea. He missed it, and things went steadily downhill for him from then on.
Had Grischuk won against Levon Aronian he'd have maintained a share of the lead, but he lost - badly - thanks most likely to his dubious time usage. In a position that wasn't unknown, Grischuk with Black played the first new move of the game, an interesting and (as far as I can tell) dubious exchange sac. At that point, he had just 13 minutes left to make the time control on move 40. After Aronian declined the offer the position was approximately equal but very sharp, and for all his ability, good nerves and blitz skills it still proved too great a challenge for Grischuk. His 21st move was an error, and any remaining hopes were put to bed after a further mistake on move 23. The final position after 29.Rd7 is the sort of position we might expect to suffer against Aronian, but apparently it can also happen to a super-GM who mismanages his time.
Finally (in terms of the decisive games), Anish Giri defeated Maxime Vachier-Lagrave on the white side of a Symmetrical English/Quasi-Gruenfeld. MVL offered a typical pawn sac that Giri accepted, and they headed to a drawish but not drawn ending. Vachier-Lagrave had to make a couple of critical decisions in that ending. First, whether to keep his bishop pair or to go for opposite-colored bishops; he opted for the latter. Later, he had to decide whether to force the last pair of rooks off the board at the cost of letting White's pawn advance a couple of squares, or whether to keep it blockaded further back; he chose the former. I think the former decision was something like a coin flip, and mostly a matter of taste. In the second case it seems he may have chosen wrongly, but even then the ending may still have been a draw. The final error was 42...Kf6 (42...f6 was a must, when White remains much better but [probably] not winning). Giri found a nice, forcing way to finish the game, and got back to an even score in the tournament.
The other games, Radjabov-So and Lupulescu-Deac finished peacefully.
The games, with my comments to the decisive games, are here. And these are the pairings for round 8: