R8: Anand, Aronian, Carlsen win

Round 8 has started. Without anything fancy by the way; the players arrived at the theater, walked into the playing hall, and about eight minutes later they went to their boards. A very short speech and a gong followed.

This article will be updated during the round. Of course I already made some video footage, but the first update of this article will contain some photos. And, not a trivial thing: the games can be followed live here.

Today's results:
Anand-Shirov 1-0 Ivanchuk-Carlsen 0-1 Radjabov-Leko 1/2 Aronian-Topalov 1-0

Update 19:57h

Ivanchuk has just lost on time, while he was making his 40th move in a lost position. A second drama for the Ukrainian, who had a very good and possibly winning position for a long time against Carlsen. According to the screen that's showing the games at the stage, Ivanchuk had two seconds left, but the real clock had no mercy. "Luckily I was winning anyway," Carlsen said afterwards. He wasn't proud of his opening play: "No, ...Bb4 wasn't prepared, I just couldn't remember the lines, which was disastrous of course."

Update 21:06h Anand started the second half very well, beating Shirov with White. At first he seemed to be winning very quickly, but Shirov was very tough today. "He was very close to the draw," Vishy said. But he could made use of his extra time on the clock and after "some tactical tricks around Black's king", it was over anyway.

Radjabov and Leko drew their very interesting game. Leko had the feeling he was better after White's piece sac, but "after the very strong intermediate move 22.Qg7! it wasn't so clear." With the strong move 39.a4! Radjabov offered a draw which had to be accepted by Leko, who wasn't better anymore.

Update 22:13h Aronian also won. He considered Topalov's 37...f4 a blunder because before that it was more or less equal. The ending was very difficult to defend and in the end Topalov couldn't keep it.

First I'm having some dinner, but later tonight the games with comments will follow, and of course, videos!