World champion Viswanathan Anand could do little with his white pieces as he settled for a draw with World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen in the first round of the fourth Bilbao Final Masters, here.
World No. 3 Levon Aronian of Armenia drew the first blood in the tournament at the expense of Spaniard Francisco Vallejo Pons to emerge as the early leader in the six-player double round-robin chess tournament, played with a soccer-like scoring system.
Also playing draws were Hikaru Nakamura of the United States and Ukraine's Vassily Ivanchuk, who both fought hard but could not dispense with parity.
ADVERTISEMENT
With nine rounds still to come, Aronian leads the pack with three points in his kitty while Anand, Carlsen, Nakamura and Ivanchuk trail him by one point each. Vallejo Pons is at the bottom of the table as he is yet to open his account.
The unique event which is split into two parts — here and the final half at Bilbao in Spain, also has Sofia rules in place to discourage draws but that hardly makes a difference with the advent of Berlin defence as a regular in elite chess.
ADVERTISEMENT
Anand has been employing the opening as black almost on a regular basis and this time Carlsen used it against the Indian to get an easy draw.
It all started in 2000 when Vladimir Kramnik used the Berlin successfully against Garry Kasparov in the Braingames World championship match.
Anand could do little as pieces kept disappearing off the board and soon enough the players were left with just the bishops of opposite colours with only a draw possible.
The peace was signed in 28 moves. Unfortunately for the spectators, the foremost game of day one turned out to be the least exciting.
Aronian, however, kept everyone interested with his brand of uncompromising play.
The results: First round: V. Anand (1) drew with Magnus Carlsen (1); Hikaru Nakamura (1) drew with Vassily Ivanchuk (1); Levon Aronian (3) beat Francisco Vallejo Pons (0).