The Hindu : Sport : Anand draws with Carlsen

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Anand draws with Carlsen

NEW DELHI: Joint overnight leader Viswanathan Anand and comeback-lad Magnus Carlsen drew quickly before Levon Aronian and Vladimir Kramnik won their games to inch closer to the top in the seventh round of the Tata Steel chess tournament at Wijk aan Zee on Friday.

The much-awaited battle between the World champion and the World No. 1 turned out to be a damp squib, with both choosing to reserve their energies for the business end of this 13-round event settling for a draw in 18 moves.

Aronian, seeded three, defeated Alexander Grischuk with black in 49 moves to reach 4.5 points, a tally matched by Kramnik, seeded four, after stopping local sensation Anish Giri in 59 moves.

Surya Shekhar Ganguly (2.5 points), playing white, shook off a string of defeats to score over the lowest-ranked rival in Group B, Dutchman Wouter Spoelman in just 26 moves.

In Group C, joint fourth Tania Sachdev (3.5) was battling for a draw with black against top-seeded Kazakh GM Murtas Kazhgaleyev.

The results (seventh round):

Group A: Magnus Carlsen (Nor, 4) drew with Viswanathan Anand (5); Hikaru Nakamura (USA, 4.5) v Jan Smeets (Ned, 2) (in progress); Vladimir Kramnik (Rus, 4.5) bt Anish Giri (Ned, 3); Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (Fra, 4) drew with Erwin L'Ami (Ned, 2.5); Wang Hao (Chn, 2.5) v Alexei Shirov (Esp, 1) (in progress); Alexander Grischuk (Rus, 2) lost to Levon Aronian (Arm, 4.5); Ian Nepomniachtchi (Rus, 4) drew with Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukr, 3.5) .

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