Macieja runs into Anand

New Delhi, December 5: Twenty three-year-old Bartlomeij Macieja of Poland is on a roll in the World knock-out chess championship. He route...

New Delhi, December 5: Twenty three-year-old Bartlomeij Macieja of Poland is on a roll in the World knock-out chess championship. He routed Alexander Beliavsky of Slovenia, rated 120 Elo points above him, by a 2-0 margin in the first set of tiebreakers and earned a fourth round meeting with top seed Viswanathan Anand.

World champion Alexander Khalifman of Russia played a marathon six-game tiebreaker series and won 3.5-2.5 in sudden death against strong contender Peter Leko of Hungary. Also advancing to the fourth round from the third round tiebreakers were Michael Adams of England, Peter Svidler of Russia, Vladislav Tkachiev of France, Alexie Shirov of Spain and Jaan Ehlvest of Estonia. Macieja, who had become a Grandmaster last year and entered the second round in the World championship in Las Vegas, won with white pieces in the first game using the Guioco Piano opening in 45 moves in a rook and knight ending after collecting a pawn in the middle game. He then employed the Nimzo-Indian Defence in the second game and reached a bishop ending in which he kept an extra pawn to get the second point after 62 moves.

Michael Adams scored a similar 2-0 victory against Alex Yermolinsky of USA and will meet Peter Svidler of Russia in the fourth round.

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Peter Svidler of Russia defeated Xiaomin Peng of China 1.5-0.5 in the tiebreakers. Vladislav Tkachiev was also a 2-0 winner in the first set of tiebreakers. Rustam Kazimdzanov of Uzbekistan fought for 63 moves in the first game in Kings Indian but with white he lost in 36 moves. Tkachiev meets Alexander Morozevich of Russia.

Alexie Shirov of Spain, who prevailed over Mikhail Gurevich of Spain in the second set of tiebreakers 2.5-1.5, will take on Boris Gelfand of Israel in the fourth round. Jaan Ehlvest of Estonia, who trounced Sergei Movsesian of Czechoslovakia 2.5-1.5 in the second set of tiebreakers, runs into Alexander Grischuk of Russia in the fourth round.Anand will be playing with black tomorrow.In the womenâ€™s section, Natalia Zhukova of Ukraine and Almira Skripchenko of Moldova won their tiebreakers by 1.5-0.5 margins. Zhukova runs into world womenâ€™s champion Xie Jun of China in the quarterfinals while Skripchenko meets Alisa Maric of Yugoslavia. The other two quarterfinals are: Kovalevskaya of Russia vs Zhaoqin Peng of Netherlands and Corina Peptan of Romania vs Qin Kanying.

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