Grandmaster (GM) Levon Aronian was deprived of the opportunity to fight for the first place ahead of the last, ninth round at the chess super tournament being held in Stavanger, Norway.
The penultimate Round 8 matches were played on Thursday. Aronian—who is second in the World Chess Federation (FIDE) rankings and who plays first board for the three-time World Chess Olympiad champions and the previous World Team Chess champions Armenia—drew level with GM Fabiano Caruana (Italy). As a result, the Armenian GM tallied a total of 3.5 points.
Current leader GM Sergey Karjakin (Russia), on the other hand, defeated his fellow countryman GM Vladimir Kramnik thus becoming the sole leader in the current standings with 5 points. Levon Aronian will face GM Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria) in the final round.
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