Anand draws again

Grandmaster Vishwanathan Anand played out his eighth draw on the trot in the Corus chess championship, splitting the point with Alexei Shirov of Spain in the tenth round on Thursday.

After 49 moves the finalists of December's FIDE World championship mutually agreed to a draw.

Three rounds remain in the first important event on the 2001 chess calendar and the Indian world champion will have to come up with something extraordinary to to catch up with leaders Alexei Shirov, who moved to 7 points with Thursday's draw, and Gary Kasparov, who has 6.5, and was playing against Jeroen Piket.

Alexander Morozevich of Russia put himself back into the reckoning after beating Alexey Fedorov of Belarus in another tenth round match. The victory took his tally to 6.5 points.

Sergei Tiviakov of The Netherlands, who was at the bottom of the 14-man table, beat countryman Jan Timman to swell his points tally to 3.

Vladimir Kramnik and Vaselin Topolov played out a draw as did Peter Leko and Vassili Ivanchuk.