Anand, Kasparov running close in Hoogovens

WIJK AAN ZEE (NETHERLANDS), JAN 18: Defending champion Anand scored a fine positional win over Jeroen Piket of Holland in a Ruy Lopez gam...

WIJK AAN ZEE (NETHERLANDS), JAN 18: Defending champion Anand scored a fine positional win over Jeroen Piket of Holland in a Ruy Lopez game yesterday and grabbed half-a-point lead over four players including PCA world champion Kasparov.

Kasparov (1.5), who was held by Vasily Ivanchuk in the first round, bounced back with a win over local star Loek Van Wely to remain in second place along with Vladimir Kramnik, Alexei Shirov and Veselin Topalov.

Against Anand, Piket handled the opening — the Chigorin variation of Ruy Lopez — poorly and paid a heavy price for it. For most part of the game he was defending.

RESULTS

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V Anand (Ind) bt Piket (Holland), Kasparov (Rus) bt Van Wely (Holland), Kramnik (Russia) beat Yermolinsky (USA), Ivanchuk (Ukraine) drew with Kasimdzhanov (Uzb), Peter Svidler (Russia) drew with Topalov (Bulgaria), Timman (Holland) bt D Reinderman (Holland), Sokolov (Bosnia) lost to Shirov (Spain).

Points: Anand (2); Topalov, Kasparov, Shirov, Kramnik (1.5 each); Ivanchuk,Kasimdzhanov, Svidler, Timman (one each), Van Wely, Yermolinsky, Piket, Sokolov (0.5 each); Reinderman (0).

Dreev wins title, Sasikiran ninth

LINARES (SPAIN), JAN 18: Top Indian junior, International Master K Sasikiran defeated Grandmaster H Olaffson of Iceland in the 10th round to take a creditable ninth place in the sixth Linares open chess tournament which ended here last night.

Grandmaster Alexey Dreev of Russia edged past overnight leader GM A Minasian (Armenia) on the basis of better tie- break score, after the two players had shared the top spot at the end of final round.

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Sasikiran, who tied for the seventh position with Kazakh Azhgaleyev, V Bologan (Moldova) and L Konstantin (Russia) with an identical seven points, had to take the lower position because of a low tie-break score.

R B Ramesh kept alive his GM norm hopes alive with a win against Naraso Dublan of Spain. The Indian IM, who finished 15th overall, has an agonizing wait ahead as he will know of his fate when the FIDE rankinglist will be announced later.

Indian national women’s champion Vijayalakshmi Subburaman bagged the best women player award, beating compatriot Mrunalini Kunte on better progressive score. Both ended their campaign with five points, the same as C S Gokhale.

Among the other Indians, D V Prasad and Abhijit Kunte tallied six points, P Konguvel and V Saravanan had a final score of 5.5 while Pallavi Shah finished with 4.5 points.