Stavanger (Norway): Viswanathan Anand beat Fabiano Caruana of United States in the sixth round here Tuesday to register his first win of the Altibox Norway chess tournament.
Having lost two and drawn three matches, the Indian was under pressure to find back his winning ways and the he did that in style at the expense of Caruana who suffered his first loss in the tournament. The win took Anand’s points tally to 2.5 out of a possible six and two white games out of the remaining three rounds might just help him recover more.
Armenian Levon Aronian was the other winner of the day, accounting for a rather out-of-sort Vladimir Kramnik of Russia while World Champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway remained winless for the sixth day running as he was held to a draw by Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France.
In the other games of the day, Anish Giri of Holland missed out on some chances before signing peace with Wesley So of United States and another American Hikaru Nakamura could not break the ice against Sergey Karjakin of Russia.
With three rounds still to come, Nakamura and Aronian now share the lead on four points and they enjoy a full point cushion over Giri, Kramnik, Karjakin and Wesley So. Anand, Carlsen, Caruana and Vachier share the seventh spot with 2.5 points apiece.
Caruana went for some unwarranted complications right from the beginning and Anand did not mind any of those as he steered himself to a fine position in the middle game. He finished off the match in 47 moves.