Anand, Leko scrape through

By Our Chess Correspondent

CHENNAI, OCT. 29. World chess champion Viswanathan Anand and Peter Leko of Hungary qualified for the knock-out phase of the Corsica Masters Rapid chess tournament in Basti, France on Sunday after big difficulty while the third favourite Alexei Shirov of Spain could not qualify for the pre-quarter final stage of the event.

The qualifiers attracted 99 strong players and the strength was considerable since the event did not clash with the Chess Olympiad like last year. The qualifiers which had a ten minute plus five second a move time control was won by the chubby Russian, Sergey Rublevsky with five wins and four draws. He scored seven points from nine games.

Anand, the title holder, was shocked in the eighth round by Leok Van Wely of the Netherlands. Running a risk of not qualifying if he did not win his last game, he drew with his former trainer Mikhail Gurevich of Belgium to finish eleventh. The top sixteen players advanced to the pre-quarterfinals.

The qualifiers were dominated by Russians or players of Russian origin representing various other states. The noticeable non- qualifier was FIDE World chess championship finalist Alexei Shirov who bowed out after a final round defeat to Germany's Igor Glek. The event was so tough that Shirov scored 5.5 points and finished 28th place after suffering two defeats.

In the qualifiers, Anand defeated IM Kamran Shirazi (USA), drew GM V. Iordachescu (Mda), beat IM Harmen Jonkman (Ned), drew with GM Erik Van den Doel (Ned), beat GM Stanislav Savchenko (Ukr), drew GM Sergey Tiviakov (Ned), beat GM Vladislav Tkachiev (Fra), lost to GM Loek Van Wely (Ned), drew Mikhail Gurevich (Bel).

This festival in the French Riviera with a prize fund of 600,000 French Francs runs from October 28-31. The knock-out stage will have 20 minutes a player per game plus five seconds a move, almost double the time allocated than the qualifiers. Having scraped through in the qualifiers, Anand should be asserting himself in the rest of the competition which is a straight knock- out.

The pre-quarterfinals will be held on Monday evening French time and Anand will face teenaged French prodigy Etienne Bacrot.

lThe pairings for the pre- quarter finals: Sergey Rublevsky (Rus) v Andrei Kharlov (Rus), Sergey Tiviakov (Ned) v Mikhail Gurevich (Bel), Predrag Nikolic (Bih) v Peter Leko (Hun), Loek Van Wely (Ned) v Alexander Chernin (Hun), Vladislav Tkachiev (Fra) v Aleksandr Shneider (Rus), Etienne Bacrot (Fra) v Viswanathan Anand (Ind), Alexander Rustemov (Rus) Igor Glek (Ger), Alexei Barsov (Uzb) v Joel Lautier (Fra).

The final placings in the qualifiers: 1 S. Rublevsky (Rus) 7/9, 2-10 S. Tiviakov (Ned), P. Nikolic (Bih), L. Van Wely (Ned), V. Tkachiev (Fra), E. Bacrot (Fra), A. Rustemov (Rus), A. Barsov (Uzb), J. Lautier (Fra), I. Glek (Ger) 6.5 each, 11-19 V. Anand (Ind), A. Schneider (Ukr), A. Chernin (Hun), P. Leko (Hun), M. Gurevich (Bel), A. Kharlov (Rus), A. David (Lux), J. Moreno (ESP), M.S. Lupu (Fra) 6 each.

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