NEW DELHI, Dec 13: Viswanathan Anand, one day past his 28th birthday, celebrated with a comfortable 2-0 win over Predrag Nikolic even as two other fancied stars, Vassily Ivanchuk and Vesselin Topalov, became the leading casualities of the second round of the FIDE World Chess championships.Yasser Seirawan became the first qualifier for the third round when he held Ivanchuk to a draw on day two of the second round. Ivanchuk could not make any headway to try and recover from the drastic loss in the first game. Another favourite quickly followed him when Vesselin Topalov could not recover from a dreadful opening against Jeroen Piket.Yesterday, Topalov turned down a chance to play for a win against Piket in favour of a cautious draw. And in the second game, Piket beat him to go through to the third round.Anand's clash against Nikolic was seen as a potential trouble spot for the top-rated player in the championships, but he simply sailed through. In the third round he will meet Alexander Khalifman, who trounced F Nijboer of Hungary 2-0.In another match in the same quarter, an all-Hungarian clash saw the top women's player Judit Polgar being eliminated by Zoltan Almasi.In the most sensational of all second round games, Seirawan (2630) played a rather rare line against Ivanchuk (Elo 2725) in the first of the two games. The Ukrainian played a game he would like to forget in a hurry. Instead of castling on the ninth move, Seirawan, who has never before beaten Ivanchuk, played Be3 and with the Ukrainian replying with Bh6, there were too many weak squares for the black.Seirawan ignored his opponent's strange play and went about developing his pieces and taking squares. He centralised his heavy pieces, prevented Black from castling, and when Ivanchuk just refused to save himself, Seirawan opened up the center (15. f4) and blew him away. Logically, Ivanchuk ought to have resigned then, but he probably hoped for a series of blunders from the American which were not forthcoming and he finally resigned on the 22nd move.Moves (1st game, round 2)Nikolic vs Anand1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Nf3 e6 5. Bg5 h6 6. Bxf6 Qxf6 7. e3 Nd7 8. Bd3 dxc4 9. Bxc4 g6 10. O-O Bg7 11. b4 O-O 12. Rc1 Qe7 13. Qb3 Nb6 14. Bd3 Rd8 15. Ne4 Nd5 16. a3 Bd7 17. Nc5 Be8 18. Bb1 b6 19. Nd3 a5 20. Rc4 axb4 21. axb4 Rdb8 22. e4 Nc7 23. Rfc1 Nb5 24. Nde5 Rd8 25. Nxc6 Bxc6 26. Rxc6 Ra3 27. Qc4 Nxd4 28. Nxd4 Rxd4 29. Rc8+ Kh7 30. Qc6 Rd2 31. Rc7 Qd8 32. g3 Rf3 33. Rf1 Rdxf2 34. Rxf2 Qd1+ 35. Kg2 Rxf2+ 36. Kxf2 Bd4+ 0-1Seirawan vs Ivanchuk1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. e4 d6 5. Bd3 e5 6. d5 a5 7. Nge2 Na6 8. f3 Nd7 9. Be3 Bh6 10. Qd2 Bxe3 11. Qxe3 c6 12. Qh6 Ndc5 13. Rd1 Qb6 14. Bb1 Ke7 15. f4 exf4 16. Rf1 Rf8 17. Qxf4 f6 18. dxc6 Qxc6 19. Nd4 Qe8 20. Nd5+ Kd8 21. Qxd6+ Bd7 22. Nb5 1-0
