Anand defeats Gelfand

World Champion Vishwanathan Anand defeated Grandmaster Boris Gelfand of Israel in the Blindfold game, while he drew the Rapid game, in a keenly contested fourth round tie in the 10th Amber Blindfold and Rapid chess tournament, in Monte Carlo.

In the overall standings, Anand now shares the lead with Braingames champion Vladimir Kramnik of Russia, Vesselin Topalov of Bulgaria and GM Peter Leko of Hungary, with 5.5 points.

Ljubomir Ljubojevic of Yugoslavia and Jeroen Piket of Netherlands are joint second with four points.

In the Blindfold game, playing with white, Anand opened with Sicilian Najdorf. Gelfand was clearly in a better position in the middle of the game, but Anand took the initiative and didn't allowed Gelfand to stage a comeback.

Earlier in the Rapid game, playing black against Gelfand, Anand played a very sharp game from a Catalan opening. After sacrificing a pawn at the cost of white's light squared Bishop, Anand attacked the king side with his Queen and minor pieces.

Gelfand was pushed to the wall and could not complete his development. Another piece sacrifice by Anand made the position extremely wild and only some skilful play by Gelfand steered the game to a draw.

In the other matches of the Blindfold section, Kramnik crushed defending champion GM Alexei Shirov of Spain. It was an absolute blow for Shirov. The game took only five minutes, when Shirov blundered his Queen. Peter Leko also defeated Ljubomir Ljubojevic. It was the first defeat for Ljubo in the Blindfold section. The other matches were drawn.

In other matches of the Rapid section, Kramnik defeated defending champion GM Alexei Shirov of Spain from the black side of a Berlin defence in the only other decisive encounter in the Rapid section apart from Topalov's loss.

PTI

EARLIER REPORT
Anand beats Leko, Topalov upsets Kramnik