Five mostly nondescript draws brought the "Super"bet Chess "Classic" to a merciful conclusion. Chess fans haven't seen this kind of rip-roaring action since Karpov, Andersson, and Ribli were perennial tournament favorites, and I hope they never will again.
Congratulations to Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, whose three consecutive wins (which were also his only wins) in rounds 5-7 with draws in his remaining games secured clear first by a full point over the trailing troika of Levon Aronian, Wesley So, and Alexander Grischuk. Anish Giri and Teimour Radjabov came next, a further half a point back, both scoring 50%. Giri won one and lost one, but Radjabov was perfect in the event, drawing all nine games and doing so with great efficiency, averaging fewer than 30 moves per game. (Why mess around?)
Bogdan-Daniel Deac finished with a -1 score, which was a nice achievement for the lowest-rated player in the tournament. Fabiano Caruana was also -1, which was another matter altogether for the tournament's top seed and the world's #2. A further half a point back there was Constantin Lupulescu, who with Deac was the other representative of the home country. Like Deac he was heavily outrated by the rest of the field, so -2 was not a disaster for him. The same cannot be said for Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, who was also on -2 and technically in last place, if one bothers with tiebreaks. Not that there's really much cause for concern - Caruana and MVL may very well win their next classical event, and it's possible that both are recovering from a bit of post-Candidates depression.
Here are today's games, and I have put as much energy into annotating them as Aronian and Radjabov put into their game today.