Anand moves to joint second place

By Arvind Aaron

MONTE CARLO, MARCH 24. Having won his last two games, Viswanathan Anand has moved to joint second place in the 9th Amber chess tournament at the Le Metropole Palace Hotel here on Thursday.

In the rapid session of the seventh round, Anand scored a positional 46-move victory over Jeroen Piket of the Netherlands to climb to 8.5 points. On Wednesday evening, Anand triumphed over Veselin Topalov in a hair-raising blindfold game to go up 1.5-0.5. Thursday's victory coincided with the arrival of his Georgian trainer Elizbar Ubilava from Madrid.

Alexei Shirov of Spain, who beat Topalov of Bulgaria in rapid chess, leads with 10 points out of 13 and is ahead by 1.5 points. Anand and Topalov are in second place with 8.5. The blindfold session of the seventh round involving these players is in progress. Four rounds remain to be played in this $127,500 event organised by Association Max Euwe.

Blindfold games

In the last set of blindfold games, Anand made a 26- move draw playing at a high-speed and finishing with more than 30 minutes in a 25-minute game! For making each move, players get 20 seconds as increment and his speed was rattling. This draw with black in a Slav defence against Piket gives him a 1.5-0.5 score for the day and nine points from 14 games.

Rapid games

Black pieces and higher rated players behind them dominated the first rapid session. Van Wely who shocked the defending champion in Wednesday's rapid encounter missed a chance to defeat Ivanchuk on the 20th turn. He got positionally outplayed and lost in 49 moves.

Ljubojevic misplaced his knights and let Gelfand sacrifice his knight and win two pawns that decided the issue in 39 moves. ``His 20th move was bad, after that I was playing for an advantage,'' Gelfand said. In the Lautier versus Kramnik game, the latter with black pieces threatened to win material on the 28th move after Lautier made a mistake on move 27, overlooking a bishop pin.

In the second set of rapid games it was up to favourites Anatoly Karpov, Shirov and Anand to nullify the insult effected on white in the earlier session.

Anand has warmed up in the tournament with his second successive victory. His confidence level is back and importantly he is vying for the combined title. Anand opened with the king pawn and faced the closed Ruy Lopez from Piket. The opening of two files on the queen side gave him access to those in the queen and minor piece ending. White's queen penetrated ahead of time and was combining with the knight well when Piket resigned.

``I just got a good ending,'' Anand said after the game. It mattered and black had to suffer in all lines. Having moved to a respectable fifty per cent score in rapid chess Anand can hope for more in Friday when he meets Predrag Nikolic.

Having his winning rhythm broken by Anand, Topalov went down for the second straight time. Shirov outplayed him in 75 moves after Topalov's rook for minor piece sacrifice looked insufficient compensation.

Karpov was the favourite who failed to win with white. But it was the most absorbing see-saw game with players having a few seconds on their clocks and exchanging blunders, weak and strong moves until they drew after 111 moves. Karpov missed a mate in two and Nikolic a chance to win on two occasions.

Wednesday's Blindfold games

The last session on Wednesday was quite eventful and at the end of it rearranged the leader board with Anand halting Topalov's unbeaten spell by beating him in 47 moves. Shirov's 54- move victory over Nikolic in the ending catapulted him into lead at the end of six rounds.

Anand saw more tricks than his rival and out-smarted Topalov to move into sole lead in the blindfold section with five points from six games. His final manoeuvre with his queen on the 41st move was deadly which Topalov overlooked and suggested by Kramnik in the pressroom. Topalov gave up his queen for rook but resigned five moves later.

``His king was bull-charging and I was feeling like I was waving the red flag,'' Anand said about Topalov's mysterious king moves which looked dangerous for both sides. It was the most thrilling encounter so far and by winning it, Anand is back in the combined tournament and meaning business in the blindfold section where he is one point ahead of the rest. Karpov and Piket fought a 57-move draw but the computer was trying to save it as if black won.

There are a number of bugs in the programme used by Lost Boys B.V., but the blindfold event which requires special programming is proceeding without a major glitch. One of the serious problems to affect the competition was when the computer announced a check as mate and did not allow black to capture by en passant, the only move.

``Since that we have removed the mate feature and from now on a mate will not stop the game here,'' said the software engineer who is afraid to make changes to the main programme during the course of the tournament.

lThe results (seventh round): Rapid: L. van Wely lost to V. Ivanchuk, J. Lautier lost to V. Kramnik, L. Ljubojevic lost to B. Gelfand, A. Karpov drew with P. Nikolic, A. Shirov bt V. Topalov, V. Anand bt J. Piket.

Blindfold: V. Ivanchuk bt L. Van Wely, V. Kramnik drew with J. Lautier, B. Gelfand bt L. Ljubojevic, P. Nikolic playing A. Karpov, V. Topalov playing A. Shirov, J. Piket lost to V. Anand.

Sixth round: Blindfold: A. Karpov drew with J. Piket, V. Anand bt V. Topalov, A. Shirov bt P. Nikolic.

The standings after seven rounds: 1 A. Shirov (ESP) 10/14 plus one game on hand, 2-3 V. Anand (Ind), V. Topalov (Bul) 8.5 each plus one game on hand each, 4 A. Karpov (Rus) 8 plus one game on hand, 5 V. Kramnik (Rus) 8, 6-7 B. Gelfand (Isr), V. Ivanchuk (Ukr) 7.5 each, 8 J. Piket (Ned) 5.5 plus one game on hand, 9 L. van Wely (Ned) 5.5, 10 P. Nikolic (Bih) 4 plus one game on hand, 11 J. Lautier (Fra) 4, 12 L. Ljubojevic (Yug) 3.5.

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