Viswanathan Anand displayed his best defensive resources to beat twice Russian champion Alexander Motylev in the second round of Group A of the Corus Chess Open on Sunday.It turned out to be an excellent day for Anand as black after a cautious first round in the category-19 super tournament and the Indian ace now looks good enough to lift what would be his sixth Corus title.Teimou Radjabov of Azerbaijan was trying to convert his material advantage into a full point against Sergei Karjakin of Ukraine to retain sole lead that he held after the first round after beating Loek Van Wely of Holland in the first round.Interestingly enough, Anand's archrivals in the event top seed Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria and World champion Vladimir Kramnik of Russia also scored emphatic victories against Van Wely and Alexei Shirov of Spain respectively to maintain their placing at par with Anand in this 14-players round robin tournament.Anand really had to pull himself together for the game against Motylev who is making his debut in Group A of this elite event.Playing black, the Indian ace was up against the most dangerous variation against his Sicilian Najdorf and showed great defensive acumen to keep white forces at bay.Motylev continued in his search for an elusive advantage with repeated attacking maneuvers against Anand's king but the Indian was always one up in defense, finding out the best resources in quick time. Anand won in just 31 moves.Viswanathan Anand kickstarted his campaign with an easy draw with black against former world champion Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine in the first round of Corus Chess tournament here.Negi wins: In Group C, world’s youngest GM Parimarjan Negi scored a scintillating victory over local International Master Wouter Spoelman to announce his arrival in style.The Dutchman proved no match for Negi who cruised, bruised and squeezed out his opponent’s resources in quick time to emerge as an early leader. Four games out of seven ended decisively in this section and quite impressive among these was Hou Yifan of China who outclassed Nadezhda Kosintseva of Russia to start with a victory as well.Parimarjan uncorked a new idea on the 14th move, inviting tactical fireworks. He was in his elements as Spoelman fell for the trick and allowed Parimarjan to gain a dangerous initiative after a rook sacrifice. Negi remained on top and won in just 27 moves. The other big winner was IM Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia who defeated top seed and hot favourite Michal Kras-enkow of Poland while Emanuel Berg of Sweden had it easy against Edwin van Haastert of Holland.
