Anand held, Kasparov leads

Vaselin Topalov, Alexy Shirov, Vassily Ivanchuk and Vladimir Kramnik were a further point behind the leader.

Anand’s draw against Bosnian GM Gokolov took only one hour and 52 minutes of which the world number two Indian used up only 12 minutes.

Sokolov may have walked into Anand’s opening preparation but the Bosnian Grandmaster was obviously clear of what he was doing as he accepted the queen’s gambit and reached a dead drawn position into the middle game.

Realising that there was no possibility of any result, both players agreed to split the point after 23 moves.

That put Kasparov, who was helped by mistakes byReinderman, clear into the lead over overnight joint leader Anand.

Playing Sicilian defence, at which he is strong, Kasparov did not seem to have any clear advantage till the 17th move. Reinderman, playing in this kind of company for the first time, made his first error on 18th move with his 18.G5 move – where playing 18 kb1 or 18 qg2 would have been a sound option.

Sasikiran in joint lead on bad day for Indians

UBEDA (SPAIN), JAN 22: IM Krishnan Sasikiran, C S Gokhale and IWM Vijayalakshmi Subburaman came out unscathed from the second round of the Ubeda International Chess Tournament which saw most of the Indians lose their matches.

Sasikiran outclassed IM D Sulipa (1) of Ukraine for his second win to be in lead with a host of players including Russian GMs Alexey Dreev and S Tiviakov after the second round yesterday.

Sasikiran opted for kings’ Indian defence against Sulipa, who played the Samiesch variation, and mated his opponent on the 37th move.

Vijayalakshmi, who lost to GM Baguturov inthe first round, bounced back with a fine win against Spain’s F Pareira. Gokhale, who lost a stubborn battle to Russian GM S Tirov in the opening round, scored an easy win over D Dongart of Denmark.

R B Ramesh overcame a disadvantageous position against D Kamlianovic with accurate play to force a draw in 52 moves.

But former national champions Abhijit Kunte, P Konguvel and D V Prasad, IM V Saravanan and IWMs Mrunalini Kunte and Pallavi Shah went down to their opponents as the Indians had a poor day in the tournament, the second event of their Spanish sojourn.

IM Kunte had a bad day against third seed GM S Tiviakov on the second board. The Indian played the Alapin variation against the Russian’s Sicilian but allowed Tiviakov to make the important nb4-nd5 move and lost the advantage. The Russian thereafter did not face any problem in winning the game.