Artemiev with a typical position that he likes, so he's got a lot of experience here. But objectively Aronian is doing very well here, with excellent space/control in the center.
Preparing to transfer the knight to the queenside, and also opening up the vision for his bishop.
Aronian will be eyeing up kingside attacking chances over the coming moves, so he begins by grabbing more space.
Artemiev has to find a really difficult move here, dropping the knight back to where it came from! The point is that he must challenge Aronian's very strong knight to ease the pressure from the kingside attack.
Aronian immediately capitalizes on Artemiev's mistake, bringing his final minor piece into the game. The build-up of forces is very dangerous here.
Looking to ease the pressure, but now Aronian can take the piece and fracture Artemiev's structure, with an advantage.
Aronian ends up trading the wrong minor pieces on the kingside. All of a sudden, this endgame offers more practical chances for Artemiev in my view, due to the queenside pressure outweighing the kingside attack.
But Artemiev immediately goes wrong. Now Aronian can move in with his queen and hit the pawn, which will be tough to deal with.
Artemiev blocks the attack in the most natural way, but now his king's defenses are going to be stretched too thin!
Aronian finds the killer continuation. The rook is hanging, while the threatened rook lift is extremely nasty.
A very ugly move. But the problem was recapturing with the pawn would have cost Artemiev a pawn.
Artemiev may have overlooked that now Aronian has a choice of which pawn to take. The central one looks best to capture!
A crunching exchange sacrifice. It's clear that Artemiev is the one hanging on for dear life here, with Aronian able to force a draw by repetition if the rook is taken.
Patient play by Aronian, who knows he's in no rush to find the decisive blow. Now his queenside is safe against the pressure.
Aronian wins the match!
He takes a draw in a winning position, since he knows that in Armaggedon tiebreaks, a draw from the Black side is as good as a win. Very convincing play by the in-form Levon Aronian, who makes it look easy against a player who has shown an ability to compete against the world's best in rapid & blitz formats.