Anand opens with easy win

Grandmaster Vishwanathan Anand of India scored a fluent victory over Tissir Mohammed of Morocco in the opening round of the first FIDE World Cup chess championship in Shenyang, China, on Saturday.

The tournament features 24 players, 22 of whom are Grandmasters, divided into four groups of six players each. The contestants go through a round-robin format initially and the top two from each group advance to the knock-out quarter-final stage.

A separate tournament for women is also being held simltaneously.

Anand, placed in Group D along with FIDE World champion Alexander Khalifman and Boris Gelfand, opened his game against Tissir, one of the two players who are not Grandmasters, with his pet king pawn.

The game witnessed routine opening moves of the Rauzer attack of the Classical Sicilian till the 12th move when the Moroccan deviated from the well-trodden paths and decided to move his queen to the base rank.

Anand also changed tactics and launched an attack against the king with a kingside pawn roller. He slowly built his position and gave his pieces optimum space to ensure a safe yet devastating attack.

By this time Tissir had lost control and it seemed he was just completing the rituals. And as the kingside began to open up for the final punch, he resigned. The game lasted just 25 moves and Anand seemed satisfied with his performance.

The other two games in Anand's group as well as all those in Groups A and B ended in draws.

Khalifman could not claim advantage from his opening and had to settle for a draw against GM Vladislav Tkachiev of France after just 18 moves.

In a Queen's Gambit Accepted, Tkachiev surprised the Russian with his choice of moves and steered the game into a level endgame with exchange of pieces at regular intervals.

With no chance of victory in sight, both players agreed to sign the peace treaty.

Gelfand mishandled a clearly advantageous position before signing truce with Russian GM Pavel Tregubov who employed the Accelerated Sicilian Sveshnikov with black pieces.

Gelfand got spatial advantage in the middlegame after which Pavel had to concede a pawn for counterplay. However, erroneous technique by Gelfand let Pavel off the hook and a drawn rook and pawns endgame was reached after 29 moves.

The other decisive games were witnessed in Group C with Peter Svidler and Evgeny Bareev (both of Russia) scoring hard fought wins over Alexie Federov of Bulgaria and Rizouk Aimen of Algeria respectively.

In the women's tournament, top seed and favourite GM Xie Zun of China was held to a draw by WGM Natalia Zhukova of Ukraine while former world champion Maya Chiburdanidze of Georgia went down to GM Pia Cramling of Sweden.