Anand to meet Macieja in fourth round

Poland's Bartlomiej Macieja scored an upset victory over Alexander Beliavsky of Slovakia in the two straight tie-break games on Tuesday to set up a fourth round clash with Indian Grandmaster Vishwanathan Anand in the World chess championship in Delhi.

World number two Anand, who made it to the 16-player fourth round on Monday with a classic 1.5-0.5 win over Smbat Lputian of Armenia, should find Macieja an easy opponent.

The Polish GM has 2536 ELO points while Anand, with 2762 points, is a class apart from rest of the field. Macieja's shock win over Beliavsky (2659) has somewhat cleared Anand's path to the championship final.

Title aspirant Alexei Shirov of Spain was also through to the fourth round, beating Belgium's Mikhail Gurevich in the tie-break games of the third round.

The Latvia-born Shirov, who once challenged chess wizard Gary Kasparov for the rival World championship title, is in the bottom half of the draw and a likely candidate for a spot in the final.

British GM Michael Adams won both the games against Alex Yermolinsky of the United States to cruise into the next round. After losing the first tie-break game, Yermolinsky had a good chance of equalising the match but he lost on time pressure and bowed out of the World championship.

The women's section saw a major upset when Almira Skripchenko-Lautier of Moldova outwitted world No. 2 Alisa Galliamova of Russia in the third round tie-break with a margin of 1.5-0.5.

Skripchenko, who won the first tie-break game, was at one stage in a position to win the second one too. But she surprised chess enthusiasts by opting for perpetual checks to draw the game.

The Moldovan, married to French Grandmaster Joel Lautier, who comes from an ardent chess-playing family, kept the family tradition alive despite having her husband out of the event in the first round itself.

Only two matches from the women's championship had entered the tie-breaks and both were decided in the second game itself.

Natalia Zhukova of Ukraine beat highly-rated Xu Yuhua of China 1.5-0.5 to move ahead.

The day saw all the seeded players except Beliavsky qualifying for the fourth round.

Defending champion Alexander Khalifman of Russia was being given a tough time by promising Hungarian Peter Leko as the two GMs drew three tie-break games.

Khalifman and Leko decided to split the point in both the 25-minute time control rapid games and then again failed to break the deadlock in the 15-minute rapid.

Jaan Ehlvest of Estonia also made it to the pre-quarter finals with a 2.5-1.5 win in the four tie-break games.

Also, Russia's Peter Svidler and Vladislav Tkachiev of France made it to the fourth round with wins over Peng Xiaomin of China and Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan respectively.