World champion Viswanathan Anand had to settle for a disappointing 33-move draw with USA's Hikaru Nakamura in the eighth and penultimate round of the Tal memorial chess tournament in Moscow on Thursday.Anand's sequence of eight draws took his tally to four points and kept him in the sixth spot. In the day's only decisive battle, Armenia's Levon Aronian defeated Peter Svidler to lead at five points.
Playing white, Anand lost the momentum in early in this King's Indian game but Nakamura handed the initiative right back on the 21st move. However, Anand failed to cash in on the positional edge and surrendered the advantage two moves later.
The exchange of the queens on the 27th move once again put Anand in a better position. But Anand could not find a better continuation and settled for a draw after the players repeated the moves.
The results (eighth round): Viswanathan Anand (4) drew with Hikaru Nakamura (USA, 3); Magnus Carlsen (Nor, 4.5) drew with Ian Nepomniachtchi (Rus, 4.5); Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukr, 4.5) drew with Boris Gelfand (3); Levon Aronian (Arm, 5) bt Peter Svidler (Rus, 3.5); Vladimir Kramnik (Rus, 3.5) drew with Sergey Karjakin (Rus, 4.5).
