Anand

Mainz: World No. 2 Viswanathan Anand bounced back in style defeating Grandmaster Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan in the third game of Grenkeleasing Rapid World Championship at the Mainz chess classic here.

After a poor start that left him trailing Radjabov by a full point after the opening day of this 8-game match, the victory was a much needed boost for Anand.

After the fourth game of the match ended in a draw, the scores are now tied at 2-2 with four games remaining.

Grandmaster P. Harikrishna came up with another sparkling show, winning five of his last six games in the Finet 960 Open tournament to be tied for fourth spot in this section with 8.5 points out of a possible 11.

Harikrishna, who had won the Cleric Medical Chess 960 junior champion match against Arkadij Naiditsch of Germany earlier in the event, will now defend his junior title next year against GM Andrei Volokitin of Ukraine, who earned the right to meet the champion after emerging as the best junior at the Finet Open.

For the record, the tournament was won by Etienne Bacrot of France who scored 9.5 points.

The day belonged to the defending champions as Russian Peter Svidler scored two victories to level scores against Armenian Levon Aronian in the chess 960 world championship clash.

It may be recalled that Svidler had started off with two losses on the opening day but two subsequent victories have now brought him back in the match which may go either way from here.

Anand won the third game of the match with black pieces wherein the Indian was able to use an idea devised at home in the Moscow variation of the Semi Slav defense.

Anand blitzed out the opening moves at lightning speed and used barely a minute on his clock for the first 20 moves.

This made Radjabov all the more uncomfortable and the Azerbaijani also fell behind the clock while his position demanded accurate defence.

Anand sacrificed an exchange to make white’s position more difficult in the middle game showing excellent depth in preparation and Radjabov decided to sacrifice a piece to relieve some of the pressure.

However, even that did not ease white’s problems as Anand skilfully threw one salvo after another at white’s king finishing the game with an elegant mating attack. (PTI)