Anand draws with Vachier-Lagrave

St. Louis (USA), August 20

Viswanathan Anand played out a draw with Maxime-Vachier-Lagrave of France in the second round of Sinquefield Cup. 

Anand tried engaging Maxime-Vachier-Lagrave in a theoretical duel but did not find ways to score his first victory. Having drawn the first game rather easily with black against Hikaru Nakamura of United States, Anand went for the kill against Vachier-Lagrave in the latter’s pet Sicilian Najdorf but it did not yield the desired result.

Vachier-Lagrave managed a tangible position and then found some fine manoeuvres to keep Anand’s forces at bay. Draw, in fact, was the order of the day barring a certain Magnus Carlsen who gave it his all in an 88-mover. Up against Sergey Karjakin, Carlsen knew the position was always close to a draw but kept on fighting in his typical style to eventually net his first victory in the event. It was as late as on the 77th move that Karjakin, running out of time, made the fatal error and the world champion pounced on it as if he was waiting for it all along. 

Carlsen thus joined Levon Aronian of Armenia and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan in lead on 1.5 points out of a possible two and Nakamura, Vachier-Lagrave, Anand, local star Fabiano Caruana and Alexander Grischuk of Russia share the fourth spot on one point each. Wesley So stands ninth on a half point while Karjakin stands last. — PTI