World rapid champion Viswanathan Anand was held to a draw for the second day on Wednesday with Loek Van Wely of The Netherlands putting breaks on him in the 10th round of Corus chess tournament in Wijk Aan Zee, The Netherlands.
Anand after the draw inched to 6 points out of a possible 10 and his placing with just three rounds to go will be finalised only after the other results pour in.
The overnight joint leader Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria suffered a huge setback as he went down against best ever woman player Judit Polgar of Hungary while the other leader Peter Leko of Hungary was surviving anxious moments against Alexander Morozevich of Russia at the time of going to press.
Anand had beaten Van Wely in their last encounter during the chess Olympiad but only after the latter missed out in a simply balanced position. That game was also a Sicilian Sveshnikov and today too Wely employed the same set up to explore further.
After both players blitzed out the opening moves in quick time Anand was surprised as Van Wely sacrificed a pawn on the queen side to get his attack on the king side rolling. Anand definitely looking better in the middle game missed out on a tactical trick after netting himself another pawn and eventually had to split the point as Van Wely, playing energetically, won an exchange and forced repetition of the position after 42 moves.
Polgar was in her element in a finely crafted victory over Topalov who just could not get any chances with his white pieces.
After a few lackluster moves, Topalov got his pieces trapped in the middle game and could not get any real counterplay thereafter. Polgar picked up another piece and wrapped the game quite easily.
In the C group of the event, Parimarjan Negi gave an inspired performance to beat Dutchman Joost Wempe who played white.
Negi faced the queen pawn opening and went for the Queen's Indian defence against which Wempe had nothing planned in particular. After slugging out a complicated middle game, Wempe allowed black to get a dangerous kingside attack and the game ended with a tactical stroke resulting in forced checkmate.
Available results round 10:
Michael Adams (6, Eng) drew with Vladimir Kramnik (Rus, 5.5); Alexander Grischuk (Rus, 5.5) beat Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukr, 4.5); Nigel Short (Eng, 4.5) drew with Peter Svidler (Rus, 4.5); Viswanathan Anand (Ind, 6) drew with Loek Van Wely; Lazaro Bruzon (Cub, 4.5) playing Ivan Sokolov (Ned, 2 .5); Alexander Morozevich (Rus, 3) playing Peter Leko (Hun, 6); Veselin Topalov (Bul, 5.5) lost to Judit Polgar (Hun, 5).
