World Cup Champion Viswanthan Anand started his campaign with a fighting draw against Grandmaster Alexander Grischuk of Russia in the first round of the World Rapid Chess Championship that got underway at Cap Dfagde, France on Friday.

One of the main attractions, world's strongest ever woman player Judit Polgar of Hungary took off in style by defeating local challenger Joel Lautier.

Apart from Judit, only Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria and Russian Champion Peter Svidler could make a winning start that gives just another indication of the tough battles in the opening game.

The tournament has two divided groups with eight players each and four from each group will qualify to the next stage after playing a round robin league. Thereafter the event will be a knockout.

Anand really had some tall task on hand and eventually, despite giving it a very hard try, the Indian ace had to take the draw with Grischuk.

Earlier the two played out an Anti Marshall game where Anand, white, got a miniscule advantage in the middle game and looked in fine fettle to nurse it well.

However, routine exchanges by Grischuk took the game into a heavy pieces endgame where subsequent exchanges forced a draw after 51 moves.

Results round 1

Group A:
Boris Gelfand (Isr) drew Etienne Bacrot (Fra); Vladimir Kramnik (Rus) drew Evgeny Bareev (Rus); Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukr) drew Michael Adams (Eng); Zurab Azmaiparashvili (Geo) lost to Veselin Topalov (Bul)

Group B:
Judit Polgar (Hun) beat Joel Lautier (Fra); Viswanathan Anand drew Alexander Grischuk (Rus); Alexei Shirov (Esp) drew Anatoly Karpov (Rus); Peter Leko (Hun) lost to Peter Svidler (Rus).