It's Anand's day

By Arvind Aaron

FRANKFURT, JUNE 24. World No. 2 Viswanathan Anand stormed into sole lead, by posting two brilliant victories, after five rounds in the Fujitsu Siemens Giants rapid chess tournament in Bad Soden near Frankfurt on Friday. Anand leads the six-player double round robin tournament with four points from five games.

In the third round game, Anand played enterprising chess to defeat his former trainer Peter Leko of Hungary while his play was positional in the fourth round victory over Alexei Shirov of Spain. He has played all his games on a very positive note and that's the best part of his play so far.

In another decisive game of the third round, Kasparov tore Shirov's castled structure to win with a mating attack in 35 moves while Kramnik drew with Morozevich.

In the fifth round, Anand and Kramnik repeated a line they played three months back. Anand could not get any advantage with the white pieces against the Sicilian Sveshnikov and offered a draw after 25 moves that was accepted by Kramnik.

The results:

Giants rapid tourney:

Third round: V. Anand bt P. Leko, G. Kasparov bt A. Shirov, V. Kramnik drew with A. Morozevich.

Fourth round: Morozevich drew with Leko, Kramnik drew with Kasparov, Shirov lost to Anand.

Fifth round: Kasparov drew with Morozevich, Leko lost to Shirov, Anand drew with Kramnik.

The standings: 1. V. Anand (Ind) 4/5; 2. G. Kasparov (Rus) 3.5; 3. V. Kramnik 2.5; 4-5. A. Morozevich (Rus), A. Shirov (ESP) 1.5 each; 6. P. Leko (Hun) 1.

Masters tourney (Friday's results)

Fifth round: Ivanchuk drew with Topalov, Rublevsky drew with Van Wely, Rabiega lost to Bareev, Yusupov drew with Adams.

Sixth round: Topalov lost to Adams, Van Wely lost to Yusupov, Bareev bt Rublevsky, Ivanchuk bt Rabiega.

Seventh round: Rabiega drew with Topalov, Adams bt Van Wely, Yusupov bt Bareev, Rublevsky lost to Ivanchuk.

The standings: 1. V. Ivanchuk (Ukr) 6/7; 2 M. Adams (Eng) 5; 3. E. Bareev (Rus) 4; 4- 6. S. Rublevsky (Rus), V. Topalov (Bul), A. Yusupov (Ger) 3.5 each; 7. R. Rabiega (Ger) 1.5; 8. Van Wely (Ned) 1.

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