St. Louis: Viswanathan Anand gave nothing away and played out a keenly contested draw with reigning World Champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway in the fourth round of Sinquefield Cup, a part of the Grand Chess tour.
Playing his second white in the event, Anand tried the Rossolimo variation to counter Carlsen’s Sicilian defense, an opening that the Norwegian chose second time against Anand in the current year. The game took a complicated turn in the middle game when Carlsen sacrificed a pawn to open up the position on both flanks and it was up to Anand to fight for an advantage thereon.
As it happened in the game, Anand neutralised black’s initiative post the pawn sacrifice and parted with the pawn back to reach a level endgame once again in the event. The queen’s got traded on move 33, and by move 54 none had any piece left on the board to call it a fight.
Anand took his tally to a respectable two points out of a possible four after the draw while Carlsen remained in joint lead on 2.5 points after his lone victory and three draws thus far in the 300000 USD prize money event.
The position at the top just got a bit more crowded with Fabiano Caruana of United States also joining the race at the expense of his compatriot Hikaru Nakmaura. The Italian-turned American was a cut above Nakamura in a Catalan opening game as he took his chances and his preparation came good with white pieces.
Like in the previous two rounds, this was the lone decisive game again and Caruana joined Carlsen. Levon Aronian of Armenia, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan and Alexander Grischuk of Russia are in the lead on 2.5 points.
Anand and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France are now together in joint fifth spot and a half point adrift is Wesley So of United States. Nakamura and Sergey Karjakin of Russia share the last spot with just one point from four outings with five rounds still to come in the super tournament.
