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Anand looking to continue his dream run
Viswanathan Anand would now look to continue his fine run after the first rest day in the Amber Blindfold and Rapid Chess tournament in Monaco.
- Indo-Asian News Service
- Updated: February 25, 2007 09:50 AM IST
Read Time:2 min
Monaco:
On a high after a rocking start, which fetched him as many as 7.5 points from the possible eight, Viswanathan Anand would now look to continue his fine run after the first rest day in the Amber Blindfold and Rapid Chess tournament in Monaco. The Indian ace, who has a comfortable two points lead over his nearest rivals, would take on Vassily Ivachuk of Ukraine in the fifth round. Given his form in the tournament so far, Anand would surely be looking at claiming full points from the encounter. This has been a tremendous comeback by Anand after finishing second in the Corus chess tournament in January and third at the Linares Super Grandmasters tournament, which preceded this event. Interestingly enough, Bulgarian Veselin Topalov who finished ahead of Anand in Linares is reeling at the bottom of the tables with just 1.5 points. The 6-points difference between the two is quite suggestive of a definite gap in strength in this rapid form of the game. Phenomenal success Anand success here has been nothing short of phenomenal. Starting with a 2-0 whitewash of Spaniard Alexei Shirov, the Indian scored similar victories against Topalov and Francisco Pons Vallejo of Spain. He had a smooth 1.5-0.5 victory over Russian Vladimir Kramnik in the previous round. With the two point cushion going into the fifth round, Anand is expected to win the title even if he has an average outing in the remaining rounds but given his incredible form it looks as though Anand is all set to make a record here. With seven rounds still to be played, Russian Alexander Morozevich and Ivanchuk are in a joint second spot and another half point behind are two Peters of the tournament - Russian champion Svidler and Corus champion Leko. Classical champion Kramnik finds himself a distant sixth with 4.5 points in his bag and will look forward to redeem pride in the rounds to come. (PTI)Topics mentioned in this article
Chess Viswanathan Anand
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