World champion Viswanathan Anand played out a draw with English Grandmaster Michael Adams to be joint second after the sixth round of the Grenke Chess Classic now underway here.
With his fifth draw out of six games, Anand took his tally to 3.5 points out of a possible six and was joined by German GM Arkadij Naiditsch in the second spot after the latter came up with a sterling effort to beat compatriot Daniel Fridman.
The other game of the category-19 tournament between Fabiano Caruana of Italy and Georg Meier of Germany ended in a draw leaving the former still in front with just four rounds to come.
Slender lead
Caruana, on four points, has a slender half-point lead over Naiditsch and Anand, while Fridman and Adams share the fourth spot on 2.5 points apiece followed by Meier on two.
Anand played his third white in the tournament but could not make much impression on Adams who felt the heat but was never in any serious problems.
For the record, it was a closed Ruy Lopez in which Adams was saddled with a passive knight on the queenside. However, it was not much as Anand himself noted in the post game chat, “black can live with this weakness until the queenside opens up,” he said.
According to the world champion, his 22nd move was not the best when he developed his queen.
The results:
Sixth round: V. Anand (Ind, 3.5) drew with Michael Adams (Eng, 2.5); Georg Meier (Ger, 2) drew with Fabiano Caruana (Ita, 4); Daniel Fridman (Ger, 2.5) lost to Arkadij Naiditsch (Ger, 3.5).
