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Chess
Anand at his best
By Arvind Aaron
MOSCOW, DEC. 6. World chess champion Viswanathan Anand won the best game of the day to knock out Russian Alexey Dreev and enter the quarterfinals of the FIDE World chess championship at the State Kremlin Palace here on Wednesday. Three players advanced from the main session of round four, game two leaving five matches to be decided in the tie- break. Among the games in the tie-break are: Michael Adams versus Peter Svidler, Alexei Shirov versus Veselin Topalov, Alexander Morozevich versus Ruslan Ponomariov, Predrag Nikolic versus Joel Lautier and Boris Gelfand versus Zurab Azmaiparashvili. Evgeny Bareev of Russia blanked Jaan Ehlvest of Estonia 2-0 and Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine had a 1.5-0.5 victory over Ye Jiangchuan of China to enter the last eight.
Anand won after reaching a winning rook and pawn ending in 42 moves with white from a Caro-Kann defence. The players rattled off the opening moves very quickly. Castling queen side, Anand positioned himself for a big strike on black's king side. White's 19th move was top quality and it hounded the black rook out of a natural square.
The women's matches on Wednesday were absorbing with no player making it to the semifinals after nearly four hours of play. Then, teenaged Alexandra Kosteniuk of Russia shocked the experienced Almira Lautier of Moldova to win 1.5-0.5 and become the first qualifier into the semifinals.
The results (round four, game two, with nett scores): Viswanathan Anand (Ind) bt Alexey Dreev (Rus) 1.5-0.5; Peter Svidler (Rus) drew with Michael Adams (Eng) 1-1; Alexander Morozevich (Rus) bt Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukr) 1-1; Ye Jiangchuan (Chn) drew with Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukr) 0.5-1.5; Predrag Nikolic (Bih) drew with Joel Lautier (Fra) 1-1; Jaan Ehlvest (Est) lost to Evgeny Bareev (Rus) 0-2; Boris Gelfand (Isr) drew with Zurab Azmaiparashvili (Geo) 1-1; Alexei Shirov (Esp) drew with Veselin Topalov (Bul) 1-1.
Women (round 4, game 2, with nett scores): Almira Lautier (Fra) lost to Alexandra Kosteniuk (Rus) 0.5-1.5; Maya Chiburdanidze (Geo) bt Zhaoqin Peng (Ned) 1-1; Zhu Chen (Chn) drew with Nino Khurtsidze (Geo) 1-1; Cristina Foisor (Rom) drew with Xu Yuhua (Chn) 1-1.
Honours even
MOSCOW, DEC. 6. The classical chess part of the Botvinnik Memorial match ended in a 2-2 draw between World No. 1 Garry Kasparov and Braingames World champion Vladimir Kramnik. The remaining 16 games will feature six rapid games and 10 blitz games.
All four games, including the fourth one played on Wednesday evening, ended in draws. Now, there will be less pressure on Kramnik since the classical games are over.
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