King Anand comes second best

Bologan, who qualified for this meet being the winner of the last Aeroflot Open championship at Moscow, came up with an excellent performance in the first half that yielded him as many as four points in the first five games. Thereafter, a fifty per cent score in the second half, including his only loss against Anand, was enough for the Moldovan to romp home victorious.

Yet Anand should be happy with his performance as he recovered by scoring 3.5 points from the second half of five games and he was the only one to beat the champion.

Today, Anand adopted the Nimzo-Indian Defence against Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan and the game was agreed drawn after just 13 moves with neither player even having castled.

Kramnik and Bologan fought for 38 moves in Nimzo-Indian Defence and reached a minor pieces ending with Kramnik white having the bishop pair. Both had five pawns each. Peter Leko of Hungary and Arkadi Naiditsch of Germany drew in 24 moves of Sicilian Defence.

Anand will now move to Mainz, where he meets Judit Polgar in the annual Chess Classic of Mainz. Anand played Ruslan Ponomariov last year and the year before that beat Kramnik in Mainz. Polgar is the top ranked woman and plays only open events. This year she was second to Anand at the star-studded Wijk aan Zee event.