Anand and Humpy stay on course

Black pieces dominated the sixty-four squares on the first day of the semifinals in the II World Cup chess being held at the Ramoji Film Cit...

Black pieces dominated the sixty-four squares on the first day of the semifinals in the II World Cup chess being held at the Ramoji Film City near here on Thursday.

Antoaneta Stefanova was the lone winner while Viswanathan Anand, Rustam Kasimdzhanov and Koneru Humpy drew with black pieces.

Anand set the trend with a quick 22-move draw against Alexey Dreev of Russia. Stefanova of Bulgaria improved upon her 39-move win over Russian Svetlana Matveeva. Humpy followed suit and played out a draw with defending champion Xu Yuhua of China in 44 moves and Kasimdzhanov of

Uzbekistan escaped with a half-point against Alexander Beliavsky of Slovenia after 49 moves.

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The men’s defending champion shared points with Dreev in the Queens Indian defence game. They followed the game played by Dreev against Leko in Moscow recently. Anand actually improved upon Leko’s move and advanced his b-pawn on the 13th move. After a regular exchange of pieces, Anand landed with two bishops for a bishop and knight. They agreed to a draw on the 22nd turn of Anand.

Later he observed, ‘‘white could hold easily by bringing the King to e3-square, but what he played also ended in an equal position. White is in no danger and black has to be careful.’’

Dreev also seemed happy with the result. He said, ‘‘Anand improved on my game played with Leko and his defence holds good. Draw is a fine result.’’