St Louis: Former World Champion Viswanathan Anand had a yet another disappointing display as the Indian finished ninth in the St. Louis Rapid and Blitz Chess tournament here.
Anand got seven points in all in the rapid section spread over nine rounds and another seven in the blitz to end on a combined tally of 14 points in the ten players’ field winning just one game, lost three and drew the remaining five games. The sole victory in the entire blitz came at the expense of Russian’s Ian Nepomniachtchi.
While Anand showed top-form in the classical chess just a week before when he tied for the second spot in the Sinquefield cup, he will really have to sort out the problems he faced here in blitz and rapid section before going to World Chess Cup which will be starting in two weeks time.
That said, one should not forget that the games here were played under the ‘delay’ time control wherein the clock stopped for the stipulated delays and no time was added while the World Cup will have time added to the clocks. Levon Aronian of Armenia expectedly won the title with a total of 24.5 points while Sergey Karjakin of Russia tied second along with American speed-chess-expert Hikaru Nakamura with an identical 21.5 points each.
Former World Champion Garry Kasparov finally had a good day as he inched ahead of Anand to finish with 16 points in what probably his last outing in competitive chess for another few years who came out of retirement after 12 years .
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