Viswanathan Anand played out his 10th successive draw after facing Hikaru Nakamura and finished an impressive joint third in the Sinquefield Cup chess tournament here on Wednesday.
The unbeaten Indian aggregated six points in the strongest tournament of the year. He ended up half a point behind overnight leader Ding Liren and comeback-man Magnus Carlsen.
To decide the champion, two rapid games, with a time-control of 25 minutes plus a 10-second increment from the first move, will be played. If needed, two five-minute blitz games with a three-second increment will follow. Should the tie persist, the Grand Chess Tour chief arbiter will decide on a way to break the deadlock.
Out of the four players trailing Liren by half a point at the start of the final round, only Carlsen won after his rival Maxime Vachier-Lagrave blundered in the middle game. This was Carlsen’s second successive win after nine straight draws.
Later Liren drew with Shakhriyar Mamedyarov to force the tie-break games for the title.
The results (11th round): Viswanathan Anand (6) drew with Hikaru Nakamura (USA, 5); Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (Fra, 5) lost to Magnus Carlsen (Nor, 6.5); Ding Liren (Chn, 6.5) drew with Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Aze, 5.5); Fabiano Caruana (USA, 5.5) drew with Sergey Karjakin (Rus, 6); Anish Giri (Ned, 5.5) bt Ian Nepomniachtchi (Rus, 5.5); Wesley So (USA, 4.5) drew with Levon Aronian (Arm, 4.5) .
