GM Joel Benjamin video recap 

Standings Pos. Points Player Rating 1-2 5.0 Magnus Carlsen 2851     Levon Aronian 2784 3-5 4.5 Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 2788     Veselin Topalov 2754     Vladimir Kramnik 2801 6-7 4.0 Pentala Harikrishna 2763     Li Chao 2755 8 3.5 Anish Giri 2790 9 3.0 Pavel Eljanov 2765 10 2.0 Nils Grandelius 2649  

One day you shellac, the next day you get shellacked. This is the hard life of the chess players. Magnus Carlsen yesterday won very convincingly with Kramnik, and today lost very convincingly with Aronian. The Armenian played very well, and now he's there on top with Magnus, with one round to go.

Kramnik today won against Harikrishna, letting the leaders know he's still there, ready to bite.

So, what could happen tomorrow? Carlsen plays white against a demotivated Eljanov, who's having a rather horrible tournament. Aronian has black against Harikrishna, who has had a up-and-down event so far. In theory, Magnus is favorite. Of course if one of the leaders wins, he would take it all. If they both win, there will be blitz playoff: two blitz games with time control 3+2 and if still tied the (in)famous Armageddon, where white has 4 minutes and black 3 minutes plus draw odds. But this is not all! Should both Magnus and Levon draw and one of the pursuing guys win, the playoff would be a double round-robin blitz tournament! Kramnik plays Topalov, and both of them are in the chasing group. MVL plays Grandelius, and he's the favorite to win tomorrow. The most likely scenario is a three-way tie, with Carlsen, Aronian and MVL. But who knows! Every prediction seems to fail miserably. One thing is for sure: it will be an exciting last round! ICC will have live commentary with Mark Crowther and GM Alex Yermolinsky.

Today we have two winners in the GTR contest: Corocotta dn nikenwidiartto. Well done!

The winner of the GOTD TRIVIA contest for Rd 7 is Kisei. Congratulations!