Mainz: Viswanathan Anand was fully tested in the ending by Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan in the sixth game before he won and levelled the match scores at 3-3 in the best of eight Chess Classic being played at Mainz, Germany on Saturday.

It was an unusual day with both players winning with the black pieces. This trend has been continuing from day one.

Day three saw the honours even with Radjabov sailing back into the lead with a victory with the Sicilian Sveshnikov as black in game five and Anand hitting back with an amazing endgame display in the sixth also with black.

"Barely two moves out of known opening theory, I found that my position was bad," said Anand about game five. "My white's haven't been impressive so far," conceded Anand who added, "two games are left." The last four words meant something else was in the pipeline.

Energetic

Anand won his second straight game with the black pieces and it came from an energetically and positively played ending. He defended with the Semi-Slav and the game headed for easy equality. Black's 13th move gave white one extra pawn, but Radjabov decided to give up the pawn easily. He lacked an endgame plan and his moves of shuttling his rooks only gave confidence for the black side. Anand obtained a passed king rook pawn and that mattered in his winning the game in a rook and same colour bishop ending.

Radjabov's plan with the black side has been falling in place with ease. Either he has mastered this variation for long or is thoroughly prepared for most of them. They played the first 20 moves in one minute and Radjabov broke the pawn structure of white on the queenside to make future inroads with his bishop. The exchange of queens gave him an advantage, which he used to convert in 46 moves. P. Hari Krishna started poorly in the Chess960 match but in the Ordix Open, he had a great start winning all five games.

In the 632-player event, eight others including top seed Alexander Morozevich (Rus), Shakriyar Mamedyarov (Aze), Etienne Bacrot (Fra) and others have full five points.

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