There were no rating points to be won, but Leinier Dominguez's victory in the Chess960, er, Chess9LX event in St. Louis was nevertheless one of the greatest results of his chess career. His score of 6/9 in the round robin was good enough for clear first - by a whisker. Going into the last round, four of the ten players were tied for first, and the pairings were such that a fifth player could have leapfrogged them all to win! (One sub-scenario where that happened could have had that fifth player in clear first, with SIX players half a point behind.)
Dominguez was one of the leaders entering the last round, with 5/9. He had won four in a row earlier in the tournament, and despite losing in round 7 he was still in the mix. The other co-leaders were Sam Shankland, Wesley So, and - believe it or not - Garry Kasparov, who went 2.5/3 on day 2 (of three) and had gone 1.5/2 on the last day.
The last round pairings were as follows:
The funny scenario I mentioned above would happen if White won every game (or at least all the games involving 5-pointers), but it didn't happen. MVL beat Kasparov, alas (nothing against Vachier-Lagrave, but I was rooting for Kasparov as the old-timer and an underdog, especially on account of the terrible beating he suffered in the St. Louis Rapid & Blitz a few weeks ago), and Svidler won his game as well - but that was the end of White's successes on the day. Nakamura-So was a fairly quick and steady draw, and so it came down to the Aronian-Dominguez and Caruana-Shankland games to see if anyone would reach six points.
Dominguez was winning from early on - around move 20 or so - but the ever-resilient and tricky Aronian managed to keep posing little problems for a long time. Finally, deep into the ending, on move 58, he resigned, leaving only Shankland with a chance to tie for first and force a playoff. He outplayed Caruana - a bit, but not enough to win or come *that* close to victory. The best he could do was reach rook and knight vs. rook, and as Caruana had no trouble holding the ending the game finished in a draw.
Dominguez thus took clear first, with MVL, Shankland, and So half a point behind at 5.5/9. Kasparov was alone in fifth with 5 points - still an excellent result - and Caruana finished at 50% another half a point behind. Aronian was 7th with 4/9, Mamedyarov 8th with 3.5, Nakamura surprisingly came in next-to-last with 3, and Svidler brought up the caboose with 2.5 points.