Anand Tied For Fourth Slot
By Arvind Aaron

The much awaited Veselin Topalov versus Vladimir Kramnik matched ended in a fighting draw on January 27 at Wijk aan Zee. It is well known that they fought the FIDE Unification match at Elista with some amount of pressure in October 2006. Since losing, Topalov had been crowing of a rematch and sending bank guarantees to FIDE and the press! That draw (Topalov had one knight and Kramnik one pawn after the big fight) leaves Topalov on top along with Teimour Radjabov on 8/12 with one round still to be played.

Anand played a 27-move draw with the black pieces against former nemes is Sergey Tiviakov in the penultimate round. Anand moved to seven points from twelve games and he has to play Navara David of Czech Republic with the white pieces in the final round on January 28.

Anand has a Elo rating of 2768 and he played at 2722. A shade lower considering his high standards. Anand started with two blacks and drew Ponomariov and beat Motylev. Then, he drew Aronian with white and Carlsen with black. As white he latched on a poor opening mistake from Svidler and then lost to Kramnik with black. He drew then leader Radjabov with white and lost yet again with black to Topalov. He recovered strongly with wins against the Tilburg grand master Loek Van Wely and Sergey Karjakin (Ukr) to reach a respectable 6/10. In the last two rounds he drew Shirov and Tiviakov to reach 7/12.

The five time champion Anand cant win his sixth title this time but has to wait one more year to add. No player in the pre-war history has won the Corus Chess Tournament as Anand (five times).  Anand, the NIIT Brand Ambassador is playing in the Linares tournament at Mexico and Spain next month.

Anand had won the 1998 Linares tournament ahead of the then stars Kasparov and Kramnik. In the GM group C, Negi is tied for the fifth place with 6.5/12. The top three places are out of reach for him and he can only hope for a good placing. Placings after round 12: 1-2 Topalov (Bul), Radjabov (Aze) 8/12 each, 3 Aronian (Arm) 7.5, 4-5, Anand, Kramnik, Svidler 7 each...14 players.