The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Topalov moves clear of Anand

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jul 03, 2006

Sport

Sport - Chess

Topalov moves clear of Anand

Special Correspondent

New Delhi: World champion Veselin Topalov opened up a 34-point lead over Viswanathan Anand atop the latest World chess ranking list released on Sunday.

Topalov, who retained the Mtel Masters title with a memorable comeback in the second half of the premier event in May, gained nine points in the current list to move to 2813. Anand, who was just one point behind the Bulgarian in the previous list released in April, slipped to 2779 after losing precious points in the Mtel Masters and the Chess Olympiad in Turin.

The loss of 24 rating points in a single list is the biggest for Anand since losing 27 points in the October 2001 list following the forgettable outing in Dortmund.

Vladimir Kramnik, who made a grand comeback in Turin, moved to the fourth spot, behind Armenia's Levon Aronian after gaining 14 points.

Among the Indians, P. Hari Krishna retained his 25th spot by raising his rating by two points to 2682. K. Sasikiran (2681) slipped five spots to be in the 26th place after losing 11 points.

However, the Indian list is marred by errors of commission and omission.

Errors

Those who played the National `A' chess championship at Visakhapatnam find that their gains or losses have been credited twice. For instance, Diwakar Prasad Singh, who sensationally made the National team for the Olympiad, has been shown to gain a whopping 232 points — under two entries for the same performance in the National championship — and is ranked fourth in the country with a rating of 2609. His name appears again in the 36th place as ``Singh, D. P.'' with a rating of 2383 after taking into count the lone game he played in Turin.

Parimarjan Negi, who made history on Saturday by becoming the youngest Grandmaster in the game at present and second youngest in the all-time list, finds himself down by eight points at 2437. Three days earlier, the FIDE's official website had rightly calculated the expected change in rating for Negi as 49.4 points for a tally of 2494. With the affected players wasting no time in bringing the errors to the notice of the All India Chess Federation and the FIDE, corrections are expected soon.

The top-10 list: 1. Veselin Topalov (Bul, 2813), 2. Viswanathan Anand (Ind, 2779), 3. Levon Aronian (Arm, 2761), 4. Vladimir Kramnik (Rus, 2743), 5. Peter Svidler (Rus, 2742), 6. Peter Leko (Hun, 2738), 7. Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukr, 2734), 8. Michael Adams (Eng, 2732), 9. Alexander Morozevich (Rus, 2731) and 10. Boris Gelfand (Isr, 2729).

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Sport