Anand tricked by Caruana; Carlsen wins first game

Wijk Aan Zee (Netherlands), Jan 20

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Indian Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand suffered a painful defeat from a dominant position, losing to Fabiano Caruana of United States in the eighth round of Tata Steel Masters chess tournament here today.

World champion Magnus Carlsen scored his first victory in the tournament, beating Nikita Vituigov of Russia.

For Anand, it was a forgettable day. The Queen’s Pawn opening by Caruana as white prompted Anand to sacrifice a pawn early in the middle game and as it turned out, it was probably all right.

Caruana, to his credit, sacrificed a rook for a minor piece soon after to create some dangerous threats around black’s king.

Caruana was the first to panic amidst huge complication as he erred on move 37 to give Anand a winning endgame. However, the Indian ace could not find the right path to victory and eventually also missed some forced drawing lines to go down in the tie.

Carlsen scored a quick victory over Vituigov in what was clearly a one-sided affair. The Norwegian was winless for seven rounds and the victory came pretty swift, with Vituigov resigning, rather prematurely, in a position he would have lost in some moves anyways.

Alireza Firouzja remained in joint lead with Caruana on 5.5 points, ahead of USA’s Wesley So and Jorden Van Foreest of Holland. Carlsen, on 4.5 points, is next in the standings along with Jan Krzysztof Duda of Poland. After his second loss in the event, Anand slipped to 10th spot with 3.5 points.