By IANS,
Wijk Aan Zee (The Netherlands) : Viswanathan Anand continued his sequence of draws as he was held by Sergei Tiviakov in the ninth round of the Corus Grandmasters chess tournament here. With the ninth draw Anand has 4.5 points and is in the lower half of the standings at tied eighth in the 14-player field.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Kramnik scored “his best win ever” over Magnus Carlsen and joined Alexei Shirov in the lead Tuesday. Shirov drew with Vassili Ivanchuk. Shirov and Kramnik have 6.5 points each, one point clear of Carlsen and Sergey Karjakin, who beat Hikaru Nakamura in ninth round.
Of the other Indians, in Group B Parimarjan Negi beat Dmitri Reinderman of Holland to join Pentala Harikrishna in tied sixth place at five points each. Negi won in 40 moves of Sicilian dragon, while Hari drew his game with Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu in 24 moves of a King’s Indian defence.
In Group C, Abhijit Gupta went down to Robin Kempen of Holland but Sowmya Swaminathan, who had five losses in the first six rounds, has drawn her last three games. She now has four draws for two points, and is now lying 13th in the 14-player field. Gupta is now tied fifth with 5.5 points.
Anand was on the black side of a Sicilian Alapin againt Tiviakov. Anand now needs to beat the three tail-enders to make an upward move. On Monday, he had black against the very solid Tiviakov and although he obtained some advantage it didn’t prove enough for his first decisive result.
Carlsen and Kramnik played a very sharp Open Catalan. Neither backed away from the struggle as white attacked on the kingside and black obtained a big pawn centre. Kramnik sacrificed a pawn and then the exchange. This may have left some chances for white but Carlsen’s position proved to be very hard to play and it fell apart on the run-up to first time control in 38 moves. Former world champion Kramnik termed the game as “possibly my best game ever”.
In Group B, Dutch champion 15-year-old Anish Giri suffered his first defeat of the tournament, going down in 55 moves with black in a Sicilian against Anna Muzychuk of Slovenia. Giri remained in first place, however, half a point ahead of his countryman Erwin l’Ami and Wesley So of the Philippines.