One round remains, and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov retains a full point lead over his closest pursuers. Mamedyarov decided not to take any risks today against Anish Giri, choosing a variation that has already been used to assure White of a speedy drawn in seven games - including (move for move) the Teimour Radjabov vs. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave game from round 3 of this tournament.
That opened the door for Wesley So and Alexander Grischuk to come within half a point of the lead, if they could manage to defeat Vachier-Lagrave or Caruana, respectively. Neither did. Wesley So enjoyed a very small edge against MVL's comical knight's tour of an opening, but the latter defended well and made a comfortable draw. Grischuk's game was more complex. With Black, Caruana had a big advantage early on, and Grischuk had a significant advantage later in the game, but neither player could finish off the other: draw.
A fourth game finished in a draw as well: Radjabov vs. Constantin Lupulescu. Radjabov has enjoyed a "perfect" score so far - eight draws in eight games - and that apparently took precedence over Lupulescu's -2 score. There was one win on the day, however, and it featured the other Romanian: Bogdan-Daniel Deac. He entered the round at 50%, but slipped to -1 when he lost a long game to Levon Aronian. Deac had a big advantage early on, and while Aronian was making steady progress the game was still objectively drawn almost to the very end. With the win, Aronian joins So and Grischuk, a point behind Mamedyarov with one round to go.
Today's games, with comments to all but the Grischuk-Caruana game, are here. And these are the final round pairings: