The Hindu : Sport / Chess : Eighth draw for Anand; Kramnik joint second

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Eighth draw for Anand; Kramnik joint second

NEW DELHI: Unable to shake off the sequence of draws, World champion Viswanathan Anand signed peace with Ukraine’s Vassily Ivanchuk in the eighth round of the Corus chess tournament at Wijk aan Zee, in the Netherlands, on Sunday.

After a 25-move deadlock in Sicilian, Anand goes into Monday’s rest day in the ninth place with four points, as a result of eight consecutive draws.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Kramnik defeated the in-form Hikaru Nakamura in 44 moves to score his third victory in four games. He shares the second spot with top seed Magnus Carlsen at 5.5 points, half a point behind Alexei Shirov.

Negi holds Liviu

In Group ‘B’, Parimarjan Negi drew with second-seeded Romanian Liviu Nisipeanu in just 24 moves. P. Hari Krishna was trying hard to force a win against Erwin LAmi.

Abhijeet Gupta was fighting for a draw against the top-seeded Chinese Li Chao while Soumya Swaminathan was hoping to score her first victory at the expense of Norway’s fourth-seed Kjetil Lie in Group ‘C’.

The results (Eighth round, Indians unless stated):

Group ‘A’: Viswanathan Anand (4) drew with Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukr, 4.5); Alexei Shirov (Esp, 6) drew with Magnus Carlsen (Nor, 5.5); Vladimir Kramnik (Rus, 5.5) bt Hikaru Nakamura (USA, 5).

Sergey Karjakin (Rus, 4.5) bt Nigel Short (Eng, 2.5); Leinier Dominguez (Cub, 4.5) drew with Loek van Wely (Ned, 2); Peter Leko (Hun, 4.5) bt Jan Smeets (Ned, 1.5).

Group ‘B’: Liviu Nisipeanu (Rom, 3) drew with Parimarjan Negi (4);Dimitri Reinderman (Ned, 2.5) bt Varuzhan Akobian (USA, 2); Ni Hua (Chn, 5) drew with Wesley So (Phi, 5).

Emil Sutovsky (Isr, 3.5) drew with Arkadij Naiditsch (Ger, 4.5); Tomy Nyback (Fin, 3) drew with Anna Muzychuk (Slo, 3); Anish Giri (Ned, 6.5) bt David Howell (Eng, 4.5).

Group ‘C’: Nils Grandelius (Swe, 4.5) bt Robin van Kampen (Ned, 4); Ray Robson (USA, 6) drew with Sjoerd Plukkel (Ned, 1.5).

Robin Swinkels (Ned, 5) drew with Daneile Vocaturo (Ita, 5).

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