Fabiano Caruana Stuns Anand in Tal Memorial Chess

By Press Trust of India
Jun 13, 2013

World champion Viswanathan Anand was off to a disappointing start, suffering a rare defeat with white against Fabiano Caruana of Italy in the first round of the Tal Memorial chess tournament in Moscow.

On what turned out to be a tough day for the world champion, Caruana did everything right after sacrificing a pawn in the middle game and Anand had little clue to better the judgment of the young Italian genius.

World number one Magnus Carlsen of Norway got off to a flying start defeating Vladimir Kramnik of Russia to find himself in early lead in the 10-player round-robin tournament.

Besides Carlsen and Caruana, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan made merry at the expense of Hikaru Nakamura of United States to be in joint lead.

Mamedyarov, Carlsen and Caruana nosed ahead with victories and the Russian trio of Sergey Karjakin, Dmitry Andreikin and Alexander Morozevich remain closed behind half a point adrift along with Boris Gelfand of Israel.

Anand, Kramnik and Nakamura are at the bottom but the standings are likely to change early as the second round gets underway in no time.

Playing the white side of a Ruy Lopez, Anand was surprised to find Caruana playing one of the topical systems that involves a pawn sacrifice, which once declined, became a topic of discussion in the press room.

Anand finally had to take a pawn on the queen side but Caruana had built a fine counter-attacking resource by then. As the endgame arrived, Anand was already staring at defeat, losing two pawns in tandem and Caruana made no mistakes. to score his first victory over the world champion.

Source: http://www.indiawest.com

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