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DEAR REDIFF

Ivanchuk holds Anand to draw

Vishwanathan Anand missed opportunities with prodigal abandon, and ended up being held to a draw by tournament leader Vassily Ivanchuk in the third round of the ongoing Investbank Chess Tournament in Belgrade.

The game was played on the Ruy Lopez lines, with Anand playing white. Anand attempted to come up with a novel 12th move that had his opponent pondering his response for close to an hour, then added to the confusion by sacrificing a piece on his 15th move. However, Ivanchuk declined the sacrifice, and played safe.

Though Anand was well ahead of his opponent on the clock -- having used 35 minutes, against Ivanchuk's hour and 35 minutes -- the latter responded with a kingside offensive that pushed Anand back into defensive mode. Finding Ivanchuk in time pressure, Anand attempted to rattle off his own moves at a very fast clip in order to add to the pressure, but Ivanchuk hung on and on move 32, offered a draw which Anand accepted. At that point, Ivanchuk had to finish another eight moves in less than three minutes on the clock, which led experts to opine that maybe Anand should have played on, and forced his opponent into time trouble.

Not one of the best performances the Indian master has put up in recent times, and at the end of three rounds, he finds himself a lowly joint fifth in the standings with 1.5 points, having Ivanchuk, Beliavsky, Lautier, and Shirov ahead of him. To his consolation, however, sharing the fifth place with Anand is no less than pre-tournament favourite and number one seed Vladimir Kramnik.

Six more rounds to play gives Anand an opportunity to regroup, but he will need to pull off a string of wins if he is to have any hope of winning the tournament. On the plus side, he has already played Kramnik, so barring Boris Gelfand, there are no really big names for Anand to stumble over.