Harikrishna, Aronian in lead; Anand gets off to slow start
TATA STEEL CHESS World Rapid champion held in opening two rounds; 14yearold Sarin impresses on debut KOLKATA:
The entire focus was on Viswanathan Anand — and it has been so since the day the Tata Steel Chess India 2018 event was put together. Anand is playing in India in a non-official tournament for the first time in around three decades and it was no surprise that he is the cynosure.
The spotlight continued to remain firmly on him in the opening day of the rapid event as the reigning World Rapid Chess champion battled for 147 moves but could not score a win in the first round at the Rabindranath Tagore Centre, Indian Council for Cultural Relations here on Friday. Playing with white pieces in the main line of Giuoco Piano, Anand got some advantage in the opening and slowly built up pressure on Wesley So, the 25-year-old born in Philippines who now represents the United States where he lives with his adoptive parents.
STRONG DEFENCE However, in the middle game, Anand did not play precise moves and frittered away the advantage. Wesley then had to put up an impressive defence to prevent Anand from promoting his second pawn and the game eventually ended in a draw through repetition of position.
A few years back Wesley described his aggressive playing style as ‘close to Vishy Anand’. And though he has become more solid than those days of reckless play, on Friday he showed his ability to find the right move in short time and prevent a player of Anand’s calibre from winning the game and starting the tournament on a rousing note.
VIDIT STRUGGLES However, there were no such hiccups for Azerbaijan’s Shakhriyar Mamedyarov as he opened his campaign with a win against India’s Vidit Santosh Gujrathi. The other three games in the first round between P Harikrishna and Surya Shekhar Ganguly; Hikaru Nakamura and Levon Aronian and Nihal Sarin and Sergey Karjakin ended in draws.
Mamedyarov, who has been in great form recently and rocketed up the ranking ladder in classical chess, got an early advantage against Vidit Gujarathi.
He capitalised on that to score a comfortable win. However, Mamedyarov’s joy did not last long as he lost to Pentala Harikrishna in the second round with black pieces — the Indian producing a great result early in the tournament.
SARIN DRAWS
Young Nihal Sarin made an impressive debut against former World Championship challenger Sergey Karjakin — who still holds the record for being the youngest grandmaster in the game — forcing the super GM, ranked ninth in the world in rapid chess, to share the point. However, the 14-year-
old from Kerala could not repeat that performance in the second round and was beaten by Levon Aronian, who had earlier held World No 2 Hikaru Nakamura to a draw.
Vidit Gujrathi recovered from his first round defeat to hold Nakamura to a draw in a Catalan game while Anand too played out a draw against Karjakin in his second game here.
At the end of the second round, Pentala Harikrishna and Levon Aronian were leading the standings with 1.5 points with Mamedyarov, Anand, Nakamura, Ganguly, Karjakin and Wesley So at one point each while Gujarathi and Sarin were half-a-point each from one draw.