June 9, 2017 by admin

Anand loses to Kramnik

Stavanger (Norway), Viswanathan Anand suffered an early jolt, losing to Vladimir Kramnik of Russia in the second round of Altibox Norway chess tournament here.
Anand uncorked an interesting idea with his white pieces. However, the Indian faltered at a crucial juncture and went down in the ensuing endgame.
Like in the first round, the second round too had just one decisive game and Kramnik emerged as the co-leader on 1.5 points alongside Hikaru Nakamura of United States, who drew with Levon Aronian of Armenia.
In the other games of the day, world champion Magnus Carlsen played out a draw with Fabiano Caruana of United States, Anish Giri of Holland opened his account after signing peace with Sergey Karjakin of Russia, and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France drew with Wesley So of United States.
With seven rounds still to go in the strongest tournament of the year, Vachier-Lagrave, Karjakin, Aronian, So, Caruana and Carlsen share the second spot on one point each having drawn both games, while Anand and Giri share the last spot with half a point from two games.
Anand and Kramnik faced each other for the first time in 1989 when six participants of this event were not even born.