Sofia: After losing to Gata Kamsky, Viswanathan Anand bounced back with vengeance to crash through the defence of former world champion Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine in the fourth round of the MTEL Masters Chess tournament here.

With his fourth decisive game on the trot, Anand also ensured that Russian-turned-American Kamsky, who cruised to a relatively quick victory over former Russian champion Peter Svidler, did not increase his lead.

The other game of the category-20 super tournament between Etienne Bacrot of France and world champion Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria ended in a draw.

Kamsky took his tally to an enviable score of 3.5 points while Anand remained on his toes with three points in his kitty in the 10-round event.

Svidler, despite the loss, retained his third spot in the standings on two points while Topalov, with his third draw in four rounds apart from a lone defeat against Anand, was fourth on 1.5 points.

The loss proved quite costly for Topalov as he now shares the last spot along with Bacrot in the six-players double round-robin tournament.

Anand was at his technical best against Ponomariov, who suffered his second defeat in the event. The Ukrainian adopted the Caro Kann Defence as black against the Indian ace and could only manage a slightly inferior endgame after both players blitzed out the opening moves. Ponomariov resigned on his 57th move.