Anand has 11 points

Monaco: World rapid champion Viswanthan Anand scored a fine victory over Ukrainian Vassily Ivanchuk in the blindfold game of the tenth and penultimate round of Amber blindfold and rapid chess tournament at Monte Carlo Grand in Monaco.

Despite the much-awaited victory, Anand failed to narrow the gap with Russian joint leaders Vladimir Kramnik and Alexander Morozevich, who both peaked at the right time to beat their compatriots Peter Svidler and Evgeny Bareev.

As things stand now, both Kramnik and Morozevich have 13 points and are 1.5 points adrift of nearest rival Peter Leko of Hungary.

Anand improved his position considerably after beating Ivanchuk and now shares the fourth spot with the Ukrainian on 11 points while Bareev slipped to the sixth position on 10.5.

In the blindfold section, Morozevich maintained his sole lead on eight points out of a possible 11, while Kramnik continued to be half a point adrift. Anand moved to joint fifth in this section behind Ivanchuk and Leko, both having six points each. The rapid game of this round will be played later today.

Anand finally got back his winning touch in the blindfold after missing out in the last six games. The opening was a closed Ruy Lopez where Ivanchuk fell in trouble in the endgame after getting an approximately equal position.

Anand went for tactical complications and found Ivanchuk completely off-guard. The Indian won an exchange for effectively no compensation and romped home in 61 moves.

Earlier, in the ninth round, Anand had engaged in a double draw against Shirov (reported in part in these columns’ Late City edition Wednesday), with whom he generally has a very good one-to-one record.

In the last two rounds, Anand played all four draws and before that lost to Alexander Morozevich. Morozevich has exploded into full form with three successive 2-0 results that have catapulted him into joint lead with Vladimir Kramnik. In all the temperamental Russian has scored such result, the first having been against Vassily Ivanchuk in first round. In the last three rounds, he has beaten Anand, Paco Vallejo and Veselin Topalov in both games.

In the blindfold, Anand had white in a Ruy Lopez closed and the game lasted a mere 21 moves before the point was split. Anand failed to get anything out of the opening when he missed a clever rearrangement of the black pieces starting with 16…Ne7. Black’s action allowed a release and that led to a draw.

Anand said: “I should have done something to counter these actions, but I didn’t. Our conversation afterwards was longer than the game itself.”

The rapid game was another Ruy Lopez, this time with Anand behind the black pieces. Once again the balance was never upset. Anand once again did not find enough enthusiasm about the game. He said: “There were some points of interest, but I’ve forgotten what they were.”

Moro, who is one of the most dangerous players with black pieces and he showed how. In the blindfold the Russian with black adopted a rare side-variation of the Slav that he has employed on earlier occasions against Kasparov and drawn and beaten Kramnik in.

With Topalov making a few mistakes, Moro won comfortably. The rapid game was Sicilian Najdorf. Moro was not sure if his sacrifice 13. g4, purely played on intuition, was correct, but he definitely deemed it promising in a rapid game. Next he played 21.Ncd5, a great move stirring up fantastic complications.