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Anand beats Vachier-Lagrave, jumps into joint lead
ST LOUIS, US: Five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand played a brilliant defensive game to get the better of world No 2 Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France in the
ST LOUIS, US: Five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand played a brilliant defensive game to get the better of world No 2 Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France in the second round of the Sinquefield Cup, a part of the Grand Chess Tour, here on Sunday.
Facing a lot of pressure in the early part of the middle game and till much later, Anand put up stiff resistance and his counterstrike was simply brilliant as Vachier-Lagrave suffered his first loss in classical chess this year.
Armenian Levon Aronian added to the woes of Peter Svidler of Russia who succumbed to his second straight loss while Hikaru Nakamura of United States bounced back from a first round loss to beat Dutch Grandmaster Anish Giri.
The other two games of the ten-player round-robin tournament ended in draws with Fabiano Caruana of United States surviving some anxious moments against Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria and Chinese Ding Liren getting a draw against the third American Wesley So.
With seven rounds still to come in the $3,00,000 (`2 crore) prize money tournament, Anand shares the lead with Aronian, Topalov and Wesley So while Caruana, Liren and Nakamura are in close pursuit with a full point. Vachier-Lagrave and Giri share the eighth spot on a half point while Svidler is yet to open his account.
ABHIJEET GUPTA WINS COMMONWEALTH C’SHIP
NEW DELHI: Grandmaster and former world junior champion Abhijeet Gupta has added another feather to his cap by retaining the Commonwealth Chess championship crown in Colombo, Sri Lanka, while International Master Tania Sachdev also finished with a gold medal.
In fact, all the medals in the senior category were won by Indians. GMs S L Narayanan and Deep Chakkravarthy got the silver and bronze medals respectively in the open section, while Mary Ann Gomes and Kiran Manisha Mohanty did likewise in the women’s section.
Abhijeet conceded two draws to lower ranked rivals by the fourth round itself. But the Bhilwaraborn BPCL employee showed his true mettle later. Coming in to the seventh round his senior namesake Abhijit Kunte found the going tough and then in the penultimate round M R Lalith Babu was outdone amidst complexities.
INDIA U-16 TEAM DRAWS WITH GERMAN TEAM
DUISBURG, GERMANY: The Indian Under-16 football team played out a 3-3 draw with Fortuna Dusseldorf in a friendly match.
India’s Aman Chetri opened the account in the first half while Boris Singh and Sanjeev chipped in one goal apiece in the second half of the game, an All India Football Federation (AIFF) release said on Sunday.
Chetri scored the first one just after the half-hour mark on Saturday. India went to the dressing room at half-time having maintained the 1-0 lead.
After resumption of play, the home team bounced back and equalised within the first five minutes and then took a 2-1 lead moments later.
Boris Singh pulled India level on 60 minutes.
In the 74th minute, Sanjeev scored from a fine free-kick to put India ahead 3-2.
But India conceded again, within a minute of the final whistle to settle for a 3-3 draw.
