Press Trust of India
Stavanger (Norway), June 23: Viswanathan Anand scored a thumping victory over French Grandmaster Maxime Vachier-Lagrave to jump to joint second spot after the end of the sixth round of Norway Chess tournament here Tuesday. Anand took his tally to four points out of a possible six and the Indian ace seems to be getting better as the tournament is progressing.
Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria strengthened his lead at the top with another victory at the expense of Alexander Grischuk of Russia. The Bulgarian took his overall tally to 5.5 points with his fifth win in the strongest tournament of the year.
The other games of the sixth round ended in draws. Anish Giri of Holland played a long theoretical line yet again and drew with Levon Aronian of Armenia, Jon Ludvig Hammer of Norway signed peace with Fabiano Caruana of Italy while World Champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway could not get past the solid defences of Hikaru Nakamura of United States.
Anand stole the day’s honours with a brilliant game. It was a Bishop sacrifice out of a Sicilian Najdorf that caught everyone’s attention in the middle game. His opponent admitted at the end of the game that he had been ‘outfoxed’.
