Fritz leaves Anand frozen

Anand’s bishop remained confined to the defence of his own pawns and the activity of rival pieces forced his resignation on the 45th move.

GM Vladimir Kramnik of Russia, too, got the white pieces in the first game and faced the Leningrad Dutch structure. The game took violent turns when Kramnik steamrolled his queenside pawns in the middlegame and allowed Fritz to gain total control in the centre.

Queens got traded on the 19th move in middlegame and Fritz obtained a passed queen knight pawn. Sensing danger Kramnik went for a pawns exchange mission and succeeded in eliminating all but one. The game was drawn in the rook and knight ending after 53 moves.

GM Peter Leko of Hungary drew from the black side of a Scotch Opening game.

After established theoritical moves, Leko uncorked a new idea by bringing his queen rook to queenside to attack dark square bishop. Fritz dismantled the pawn structure but had to surrender the bishop pair advantage to Leko as compensation.

The resulting position was equal and the truce was agreed after 47 moves.

GM Alexander Morozevich of Russia employed his favourite French Defence and got a dynamically balanced position after the opening. The street fighting skills of Morozevich came to fore as he matched the machine move for move and drew the game after 36 moves in an opposite colour bishops endgame.

GM Alexei Shirov of Spain will play his game on June 12 as he is away playing in another GM tournament.

Fritz 6 with an approximate playing strength of 2700 Elo is running on a Pentium III Xe on processor and the product is called Primergy K 800. All players will play their second game with colours reversed.

Meanwhile, in Ordix open GM Peter Svidler of Russia played like a wounded tiger. A loss to unheralded Vehi in the third round put Svidler in top gear and victories in the next six games made him the sole leader on 8/9. Six more games remain in the 15-round Swiss league.