2017 Gibraltar Masters - Day 9

All the way through the tournament I've kind of thought that GM David Anton Guijarro (ESP) was a bit of a 'surprise packet', whose time at the top was soon to end. But with 1 round left to play, Anton Guijarro is actually the outright leader of the tournament.
Today he dispatched Veselin Topalov (BUL) while his closes rivals drew. He is up against Michael Adams tomorrow, and a draw is at least a guaranteed share of first place. His current TPR is 2878 and is picking up a bag load of rating points. Hoping that Adams gets something from the game is the group of players on 7/9. With 8/10 being the minimum winning score (it could be 8.5), Gelfand, Vachier-Lagrave, Nakamura, Romain, Yu, Ju and Cheparinov are hoping both to win and for Anton Guijarro not to.
There were a couple of disappointed Australian players in this round, with IM Bobby Cheng losing to GM Andrei Istratescu and FM Zachary Loh drawing with Peter Korning. Cheng's loss puts paid to his chances of a GM norm, while even Loh's opponent thought that the fact he escaped proves there is 'no justice' in chess.
I scored my second win of the tournament after my opponent gave me too many good squares for my pieces. This puts me on 3.5/9 which was my target score at the start of my trip. While the game wasn't perfect, it was at least an improvement on my previous couple of rounds.
Tomorrow sees an early start for the last round 11am local time, 9pm Canberra time. If you haven't been able to watch any of the tournament coverage up until now, take advantage of this to catch the online commentary. It is well worth it.


Koes,Richard - Press,Shaun [C55]
2017 Gibraltar Masters (9), 01.02.2017