Sinquefield Chess: Anand plays out easy draw with Caruana

Former World champion Viswanathan Anand played out a second straight draw by holding Fabiano Caruana of the United States easily in the fourth round of the Sinquefield Cup, which is part of the Grand Chess tour.

Playing his third black in four games, the Indian ace did not show any nervousness caused by losses with the slightly unfavourable colour in the game in round one and two.

After an easy draw with Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria, this was a confident performance by Anand, who is hoping for a comeback in the US $3,00,000 prize-money tournament.

The number of decisive games remained on the decline since the first round that produced all decisive results in the 10-player round-robin event. While there were three and two respectively in the subsequent rounds in the fourth round it got reduced to just one.

However, the best game was the one played between Levon Aronian of Armenia who outclassed Wesely So of United States.

In the other games of the day, world champion Magnus Carlsen was held to a draw by Anish Giri of Holland, Alexander Grischuk signed peace with Topalov while Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France held Hikaru Nakamura.

With five rounds still remaining, Aronian joined Topalov at the top on three points from four games and these two are now followed by Giri and Carlsen on 2.5 points each.

Results, round 4: Fabiano Caruana (Usa, 1) drew with V Anand (Ind, 1); Alexander Grischuk (Rus, 1.5) drew with Veselin Topalov (Bul, 3); Wesley So (Usa, 1.5) lost to Levon Aronian (Arm, 3); Anish Giri (Ned, 2.5) drew with Magnus Carlsen (Nor, 2.5); Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (Fra, 2) drew with Hikaru Nakamura (US, 2).

Image: Viswanathan Anand

Photograph: FIDE World Chess Championship