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Anand wins one, loses one in round four

In Round 4 of the ongoing chess tournament in Monte Carlo, Vishwanathan Anand won the rapid game, but lost the blindfold one, against Bulgarian GM Topalov. Meanwhile, Kramnik and Lautier both picked up 1.5 points in the round to overtake Karpov in the standings.

Kramnik is now the sole leader of the pack, with Lautier at his heels, half a point behind. FIDE champ Karpov lost his first game of the tournament, after France's Lautier outplayed him in their blindfold encounter. Lautier created a dangerous passed pawn on the e-file and Karpov had to give up a rook, and eventually lost.

In their Rapid game, Topalov, playing with Black sacrificed a pawn. Anand quickly showed that to be a mistake, and stirred up a mating attack which forced the Bulgarian to resign.

However, Topalov managed to extract his revenge in the Blindfold game. It is mind-boggling that the two players could make 62 moves each without ever seeing the board.

Topalov first made sure that Anand was left with a tripled-pawn structure, which is a huge handicap. Then Topalov went about demolishing Anand's defences and wrapped it up with a flawless endgame.

Round five, scheduled for March 21, will see Anand take on Van Wely of the Netherlands.

The combined scores after four rounds are: Kramnik 6.0; Lautier 5.5; Karpov 5.0; Shirov, Ivanchuk, Topalov 4.5; Nikolic 4.0; Anand 3.5; Piket, Ljubojevic 3.0; Van Wely 2.5; Gelfand 2.