The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Anand plays white against Radjabov

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Friday, Aug 18, 2006

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Sport - Chess

Anand plays white against Radjabov

Arvind Aaron

Mainz: Viswanathan Anand will have the advantage of playing white in the opening game in the best of eight Mainz Chess Classic rapid match against Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan from Thursday evening.

Widely expected to win, Anand will play white in games 1, 4, 5 and 8. In case of a 4-4 tie, they will play a pair of 5-minute games with two-second increment to decide the champion. In the five years, only Vladimir Kramnik was able to extend Anand into the tie-break.

Radjabov has called Anand as the strongest rapid player of the world. Anand said the 19-year old Radjabov was the veteran of the present young stars like Sergey Karjakin and Magnus Carlsen.

When Radjabov won the Ordix Open here in 2005 he qualified to play Anand.

Dramatic win

Hari Krishna came from 0.5-3.5 behind to defeat Arkady Naiditch by 4.5-3.5 in the World junior Chess960 match on Wednesday.

Hari Krishna won all four games against the German No.1 ranked player. In the last game, Naiditch had a won position but lost on time. Hari Krishna said he had not expected this turnaround and had mentally given up on Wednesday and concentration on the Chess960 Open from Thursday. In the Chess960 Open, Hari Krishna won two games and lost to O. Cvitan of Croatia. Eight rounds remain in this section.

In the other side shows, Vlastimil Hort (Cz) beat Lajos Portisch (Hun) by 4-4, 1.5-0.5 in the tie-break to win the World Veteran Chess960 match. In the World women's chess960 match, Alexandra Kosteniuk of Russia won 5.5-2.5 over Germany's Elisabeth Paehtz.

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