Saturday, February 28, 2009

Anand held by Grischuk at Linares Chess

LINARES: (Spain): World champion Viswanathan Anand played out a draw with Russian Alexander Grischuk to remain in joint fourth spot after the end of the seventh round of Magistral Ciudad de Linares Chess tournament on Friday.

At the half way stage of the eight-players double round robin tournament, the Indian ace has 3.5 points.

Grischuik remained atop the tables on five points out of a possible seven and remained a full point clear of Norwegian prodigy Magnus Carlsen and Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine who scored a win over Levon Aronian of Armenia.

Anand shares the fourth spot with Aronian whose double defeat in last two rounds have severely dented his chances in the tournament.

The sixth spot is held by Lenier Dominguez of Cuba while Wang Yue of China and Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan share the seventh spot on 2.5 points each.

Grischuk held on to his own against Anand whose experiment with the queen pawn opening continued.

After coming out with a minor surprise on move three when he decided to avoid main lines of Grunfeld defense, Anand settled to play the Samisch attack against the King's Indian defense.

Interestingly, the King's Indian has been enjoying immense success in this tournament and this game was another attestation to that.

Anand tried to make a foray on the king side but the Russian was quite up to the task in finding the right manouvres. After Anand castled on the king side it was clear that the game was headed towards a draw.

The peace was signed in 32 moves. Ivanchuk scored a thrilling victory over Aronian in another King's Indian of the day. Aronian went for a topical structure but found Ivanchuk well-armed in all departments of the game.

The complexities turned in favour of Ivanchuk after an erroneous plan by the Armenian in the middle game and there were no chances to recover as the game progressed.

Source:http://sports.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Anand-held-by-Grischuk-at-Linares-Chess/articleshow/4198870.cms

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