The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Anand ensures blindfold title

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Mar 31, 2005

Sport

Sport - Chess

Anand ensures blindfold title

MONACO, MARCH 30. A quick 20-move draw with Peter Svidler gave Viswanathan Anand the blindfold title in the 10th and penultimate round of the Amber blindfold and rapid chess tournament here on Wednesday.

Anand, playing white, did not have to work too hard to get the desired result in this Sicilian game.

The result took Anand's tally to 7.5 points and beyond the reach of six players with 5.5 points each. Anand is in line to repeat his 1997 effort when he claimed all three titles — blindfold, rapid and combined — in this unique event.

In fact, the defeats of overnight joint second Alexander Morozevich and Francisco Vallejo in the blindfold games of the day made Anand's task easier. Morozevich went down to Vassily Ivanchuk before Peter Leko downed Vallejo. The results left Anand needing just a draw against Svidler to seal the blindfold title, with a round to spare.

Ivanchuk was a worthy winner after launching a fierce offensive early in the French Defence game. Morozevich, despite some good defensive manoeuvres, could not withstand the sustained aggression of Ivanchuk and resigned after 36 moves.

Leko had it easy against Vallejo. The Hungarian gained a knight on the 22nd move and 16 moves later, traded the extra knight for a rook. Vallejo blundered away his queen and resigned in the very next move.

Later, Veselin Topalov outplayed Loek van Wely to raise his tally to five points.

The results (10th round): Blindfold: Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukr) (5.5) bt Alexander Morozevich (Rus) (5.5); Alexie Shirov (Esp) (4) drew with Evgeny Bareev (Rus) (2.5); Francisco Vallejo (Esp) (5.5) lost to Peter Leko (Hun) (5.5); Veselin Topalov (Bul) (5) bt Loek van Wely (Ned) (3); Viswanathan Anand (7.5) drew with Peter Svidler (Rus) (5.5); Vladimir Kramnik (Rus) (5.5) drew with Boris Gelfand (Isr) (5).

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