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Anand suffers shock defeat to Adams
Viswanathan Anand suffers a shocking defeat at the hands of Michael Adams in the 6th round of the Linares Super Grandmasters chess tournament.
- Indo-Asian News Service
- Updated: February 25, 2007 08:27 AM IST
Read Time:2 min
Linares:
Former world champion Viswanathan Anand was beaten by Englishman Michael Adams in the sixth round of the Linares Super Grandmasters chess tournament here. With this victory, Adams surged ahead to take the joint lead alongside the world's highest-rated player, GM Garry Kasparov of Russia, on three points from five games. Anand now finds himself at the bottom of the table with Ukrainian GM Vassily Ivanchuk on two points from his five games. Shrugging off his previous bad score against Anand, Adams was in high spirit right till the end of this encounter. Playing black Anand opened with the French Rubenstein and got only a slightly inferior position after the opening. Since conceding a miniscule advantage is considered all right with the black pieces, Anand appeared unfazed at on-board proceedings and exchanged the pieces at regular intervals. However, white's superior pawn structure continued to be a dominating factor even though the pieces flew off the board as if in a fizzy. The players soon arrived at a queens and pawns endgame where Adams' spectacular 32nd move turned the tide decisively in his favour. Anand fought to stop the inevitable till the end, but had to succumb to white's passed King rook pawn in 44 moves. The clash of two titans - world champion Ruslan Ponomariov and Kasparov - was the centre of attraction of this round. Having the advantage of white pieces, the Ukrainian GM obtained some advantage in the ultra sharp English attack opening and transposed into a better endgame. However, Kasparov levelled the position with resourceful defense and neutralized his opponent's initiative closer to the first time control. Just when Kasparov was stressing for an advantage, it was Ponomariov's turn to go back to the wall and he demonstrated accurate defense in the endgame. The game was drawn after 44 moves. (PTI)Topics mentioned in this article
Chess
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