Maxime Vachier-Lagrave drew his game with Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, but it wasn't for a lack of effort on Mamedyarov's part! Just kidding: the game barely lasted five minutes and repeated a draw that has been used at least seven times since it first showed up last December. The draw guaranteed that MVL would at worst finish in a tie for first, while it also increased the likelihood that Mamedyarov would finish third in the overall Grand Chess Tour standings, thereby picking up a $25,000 bonus.
If Fabiano Caruana had won his last game (which was also the last game to finish), with Black against Richard Rapport, he would have tied for first with Vachier-Lagrave and would have let him leapfrog Mamedyarov into third in the GCT. He tried hard from the very beginning, and outplayed Rapport to achieve some winning chances in the second time control. Rapport defended well enough, however, and so Caruana came up just short in both his quests. (He did, however, *just* manage to keep his rating at 2800--2799.7, to be exact, which will be rounded up at the end of the month.)
Also coming short in the race for first place in the tournament were Wesley So and Leinier Dominguez. If either player won their head-to-head game they'd join MVL in first, but after a brief but genuine game they split the point. For So, it was the loss of one battle, but he won the war: he took first in the overall GCT race, winning the $100,000 bonus; MVL came in second and made an extra $50k.
In the games that weren't relevant to the race for first, Peter Svidler was winning in the opening against Jeffery Xiong, but repeatedly let the youngster slip away. He didn't seem to have the energy he needed to finish the job. By contrast, I don't think Sam Shankland or Dariusz Swiercz ever had a substantial advantage against each other before the game petered out into a drawn opposite-colored bishop ending.
The last round games, with my comments, are here; these are the final standings:
The next events on the calendar both start on September 7. There's Norway Chess, starring both Magnus Carlsen and Ian Nepomniachtchi; and there's also a Chess960 event in St. Louis with Wesley So, Fabiano Caruana, Levon Aronian, Garry Kasparov and six other players.