Anand settled for a quick draw

San Luis: Viswanathan Anand failed to breach the defence of Veselin Topalov and had to settle for a quick draw in the ninth round of the World Chess Championship on Saturday.

With an easy half point against the toughest opponent, Topalov took another stride towards the world title, maintaining his two points lead over Russian Peter Svidler, who was held by Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan.

Topalov took his tally to 7.5 points out of a possible nine and Svidler inched forward to 5.5. Anand and Russian Alexander Morozevich are joint third on five points, while Peter Leko is fifth on four points.

The sixth place is held by Rustam Kasimdzhanov who is on 3.5 points, Michael Adams of England is next in line on three and Judit Polgar is at the bottom of the table with just 2.5 points in her kitty.

The high-profile clash between the two bigwigs of the world championship failed to reach the expected level as Topalov was quite astute in choosing the opening.

It was yet again the Berlin Defence and Anand, white, went for one of the side variations to complicate matters.

Topalov came up with an unorthodox binder on the seventh move that left black’s king’s position a bit insecure.

Anand played thematic manoeuvres thereafter, but on the 12th move again Topalov came up with a surprise that prompted Anand to sacrifice a piece on the next move. As it turned out, the Indian ace had a forced draw in hand but playing for victory was quite difficult.

The lone victory of the day was scored by Alexander Morozevich, who took advantage of his opponent’s time trouble for the second time in as many rounds.

On the receiving end was Peter Leko, who employed the Sicilian Sveshnikov as black and looked on top in one of the off-beat variations.

Launching an attack on the kingside in the middle game, Leko displayed fine skills for the major part of the game but fell under time pressure in trying to work out the long variations.

Morozevich came up with some ingenious defence and forced parity by the 39th move when Leko had a certain draw.

However the Hungarian started to panic by this time and by the time the dust subsided, Morozevich had an extra piece for the good.

The remaining technicalities were handled by Morozevich in perfect fashion and he romped home in 54 moves.

The day’s most interesting game was played between Peter Svidler and Rustam Kasimdzhanov. Playing the black side of an English attack Kasimdzhanov matched Svidler move for move and sacrificed two pieces to force a draw in the picturesque finale.

Judit Polgar faced the Marshall attack by Michael Adams who played black and subsequent exchanges led the game to an endgame wherein Judit had an extra pawn, but Adams had sufficient compensation with his bishop pair. The peace was signed in 37 moves.