After a hat-trick of victories, World Rapid champion Viswanathan Anand drew with Braingames champion Vladimir Kramnik of Russia in the eighth round of the Corus chess tournament in Wijk Aan Zee, The Netherlands.
Anand, with the draw, crawled to 5 points out of a possible 8 and slipped to joint second spot as Bulgarian Veselin Topalov shot in to sole lead with a finely crafted victory over Lazaro Bruzon of Cuba.
While Topalov took his tally to 5.5 points, Anand and Brit Michael Adams are in joint second spot while Hungarian Peter Leko was still playing his game against Alexander Grischuk of Russia at the time of going to press.
Anand did not have much to do against Sicilian Sveshnikov who already gave him jitters in the second round of the tournament against Leko.
Having lost against Leko in the same opening, Anand was simply cautious and that was probably the reason why the Indian ace could not establish any advantage.
The Sveshnkov is famous these days thanks to Kramnik's exploit with the opening a few year's back and he did not disappoint in getting an easy equality after the dust subsided in the middle game.
The players arrived at a level Queen and rooks endgame where the peace was signed after 27 moves at Kranik's behest.
Topalov got a sweet victory against Bruzoin who could not quite handle the intricacies of a Sicilian defence with his white pieces.
Having lost to World number two Anand playing the Catalan, Bruzon changed gears in the important clash and employed the king pawn opening and that too did not serve him well.
Topalov, who was in terrfic form till he was ousted from the last world championship at Libya in 2004, took advantage of a few inaccuracies and romped home in just 33 moves.
Another overnight leader Adams, decided to play it safe yet again with former Russian champ Peter Svidler. Playing white Adams could not get the desired advantage against the Sicilian Scheveningen and signed peace in just 21 moves.
Parimarjan Negi, who is participating in the 'C' group, suffered another defeat after he went down to experienced Grandmaster Alexander Korotylev. Negi after the loss remained on 3 points from 8 games and now needs to score heavily in the remaining matches to get his second IM norm.
The results of round 8:
V Anand (5) drew with Vladimir Kramnik (Rus, 4.5); Loek Van Wely (Ned, 3) drew with Ruslan Ponomariov (4); Michael Adams (Eng, 5) drew with Peter Svidler (Rus, 3); Lazaro Bruzon (Cub, 4) lost to Veselin Topalov (Bul, 5.5); Alexander Grischuk (Rus, 4) playing Peter Leko (Hun, 4.5); Nigel Sh ort (Eng, 4) beat Ivan Sokolov (Ned, 2.5); Alexander Morozevich (Rus, 1) playing Judit Polgar (Hun, 3.5).
