The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Anand starts favourite

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Aug 17, 2006

Sport

Sport - Chess

Anand starts favourite

Arvind Aaron

Chennai: Viswanathan Anand starts as the favourite in the eight-game chess classic match against Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan, which begins on Thursday at the Mainz Hilton in Germany.

Last year at Mainz, Anand had defeated Alexander Grischuk of Russia 5-3 to keep the title.

World No. 11 Radjabov is rated 2728 and Anand, the World No.2 is rated 2779.

Anand has also been active this month when he played and won the Villarrobledo Rapid in Spain by remaining undefeated. Experience should help the Indian to win.

Anand is already in Mainz and warmed up with a 35-5 score from the 40-game simultaneous display.

Anand and Radjabov will play two games each on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday to decide who will wear the Black Jacket.

Hari lags behind

In one of the other side shows, Arkady Naiditch of Germany is leading P. Hari Krishna of India 3.5-0.5 in the Chess960 match. This variant is an idea of former world champion Robert James Fischer to quell chess theory. The last deck of the pieces is randomly shuffled and players start with a position not known to them before.

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