Guijarro leads Gibraltar 2017 with 1 round to go

GM David Anton Guijarro

David Anton Guijarro beats Veselin Topalov in the penultimate Round 9 of Tradewise Gibraltar Masters 2017 ([replay]) to take the solo lead with 1 round to go. He might only be the 24th seed (ELO 2650) coming into this tournament, but he finds himself ahead of household names in the chess world such as Hikaru Nakamura, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Michael Adams, Boris Gelfand, and especially Fabiano Caruana.

Caruana is having a hard time in this tournament after he lost to Nigel Short in the 6th round and drew with several lower rated players in earlier rounds before that, thus he’s at No. 12 in the ranking after Round 9. He’s currently at 3rd place in the live ratings with 2819.7. He’s set to face Varuzhan Akobian in the final round.