Hari wins second game in row, Anand, Negi draw again
By IANSWednesday, January 20, 2010
WIJK AAN ZEE - Pentala Harikrishna was the lone Indian winner in the fourth round of the Corus Grandmasters under way here. Harikrishna’s second successive win in Group B carried him to tied third place, half a point behind the leading duo, Anish Giri of Netherlands and China’s Ni Hua.
Viswanathan Anand drew his fourth straight game in the Group, being held by American youngster Hikaru Nakamura in a very unusual variation of the Dutch Defence. Nakamura, with black, did trouble Anand for a while before they split the point after 33 moves.
Parimarjan Negi, playing in Group B also, drew his fourth successive game as he shared the point with Wesley So of the Philippines in a 37-move Sicilian-Paulsen. Negi has two points and is tied sixth.
In Group C, Abhijit Gupta drew in 57 moves with Peng Zhaoqin, but Sowmya Swaminathan lost her third game in four and lies at the bottom with half a point. Abhijit has 2.5 points and is tied for third with four others. Ray Robson and Li Chao lead the field with 3.5 points each.
Meanwhile, Alexei Shirov continued his winning run, winning his fourth game in a row. He crushed Holland’s Jan Smeets, who went down in 37 moves with black from what started as a rather boring Petroff in fourth round. The match was declared the best game of the day.
Shirov has four points and is one point clear of the second placed trio, Nakamura, Magnus Carlsen and Vassily Ivanchuk.
Ivanchuk was the only other victor in fourth-round Corus-A competition. He beat Holland’s Loek van Wely and climbed one spot in the standings on the strength of his win to share second place with Nakamura and Norway’s Carlsen, the world’s highest rated grandmaster with an Elo of 2810.
Nakamura kept Anand to a draw in 33 moves while Carlsen settled for a draw with white after 47 moves in a Scandinavian against Britain’s Nigel Short.
