Viswanathan Anand started his campaign in the Grand Chess Tour Superbet rapid and blitz tournament with a resounding 37-move victory with black pieces over Russia’s Vladislav Artemiev here on Wednesday.
Anand drew the next two rounds with USA’s Wesley So and Azerbaijan’s Shakhriyar Mamedyarov to aggregate two points and share the second spot with Armenia’s Levon Aronian and Ukraine’s Anton Korobov.
Dutch contender Anish Giri was the leader at 2.5 points following victories over So and Russia’s Sergey Karjakin.
Six more rounds of rapid games will be followed by 18 rounds of blitz chess.
The results (rapid format): Third round: Viswanathan Anand (2) drew with Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Aze, 1.5); Sergey Karjakin (Rus, 1) lost to Anish Giri (Ned, 2.5); Fabiano Caruana (USA, 1.5) bt Wesley So (USA, 0.5); Le Quang Liem (Vie, 1.5) drew with Levon Aronian (Arm, 2); Vladislav Artemiev (Rus, 0.5) lost to Anton Korobov (Ukr, 2).
Second round: So drew with Anand; Giri drew with Caruana; Aronian drew with Karjakin; Korobov drew with Le Quang Liem; Mamedyarov drew with Artemiev.
First round: Artemiev lost to Anand; Giri bt So; Caruana lost to Aronian; Le Quang Liem drew with Mamedyarov; Karjakin drew with Korobov .
