Anand leads top seeds into second round

But GM Peter Leko was shown the exit door when Bosnian Ivan Sokolov got lucky to win on time in the tiebreak game.

Barring Leko’s ouster, there were no surprise results in the first round in the ‘A’ and ‘D’ group and all the seeds sailed through to the last 16 stage. Prominent among them are former world champion Alexander Khalifman of Russia and last world championship finalist Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine.

Anand was brilliance personified as he outclassed Timman in all departments of the game from both white and black pieces. It was a Sicilian Nazdorf in the first game with black pieces that gave Anand the lead to go into the second game.

That chess is a great leveler was evident in Leko’s loss. Just a fortnight ago the humble Hungarian won the dubai Grand Prix tournament by hanging on in a drawn position in the finals and eventually won on time against Alexander Grishchuk of Russia.

Ivanchuk and Khalifman had little difficulty in defeating GMs Loek van Wely of Netherlands and Viktor Bologan of Moldova respectively with an identical 1.5-0.5 score.