Anand leads after defeating
Piket in Round 6

World Champion Viswanathan Anand defeated Jeroen Piket of Netherlands 1½-½ in the sixth round of the 10th Amber Blindfold and Rapid Chess tournament in Monte Carlo on Friday night.

Anand defeated Piket 1-0 in the blind game.

The round was obviously not the most spectacular round so far in the tournament.

Five matches ended undecided (1-1), with only Anand defeating Piket.

The FIDE World Champion has upgraded his leading position in the tournament, since his direct rivals did not win.

Anand now leads with 8½ points in the Combined Classification.

Anand and Topalov are leading the Rapid and Blindfold classifications respectively. Both players have 4½ points.

Anand played a safe draw with black pieces against Piket in the rapid game.

After the rapid game, Anand maintained his joint lead with Vladimir Kramnik and Veselin Topalov with 7.5 points.

On an otherwise dull day that witnessed only one decisive game, Anand had it easy from the black side of a Semi-Slav defence game. Piket could not get any advantage out of the opening as Anand opted for a variation he seemed to have worked hard on.

Very early in the opening itself two minor pieces and queens were traded and the pawn structure was symmetrical. The outcome of the game at that juncture itself was anybody's guess. The truce was agreed to after 44 moves.

Ljubomir Ljubojevic of Yugoslavia proved the only winner when he won a topsy-turvy battle against Zoltan Almasi of Hungary. Kramnik drew a long game with Karpov that lasted 80 moves while Topalov drew with Boris Gelfand of Israel.

Agencies