Armenian grandmaster Levon Aronian played in a draw with Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria in the 8th round of the 74th Tata Steel Chess Tournament ongoing in Wijk aan Zee, the Netherlands.

Gaining 5,5 points, Aronian tops the standing while Magnus Carlsen (Norway), who has the same number of points is currently the second.

In round 9, the Armenian GM will face Fabiano Caruana (Italy) who is in the 5th place with 4,5 points.

The other pairings are: Magnus Carlsen - Sergey Karjakin (Russia), Khikaru Nakamura (U.S.) -Veselin Topalov, Gata Camskiy (U.S.) - Teimour Radjabov (Azerbaijan), Loek Van Wely (Netherlands) - Boris Gelfand (Israel), Vugar Gashimov (Azerbaijan) -David Navara (Spain), and Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukraine) - Anish Giri (Netherlands).