Isle of Man (UK), Oct 26:
Having taken a bye in the last round, a fresh Viswanathan Anand outclassed Daniel Fridman of Germany but compatriot Abhijeet Gupta lost to Hikaru Nakamura of the United States in the sixth round of Isle of Man International chess tournament here today.
High-flying with his superman-cap, overnight joint leader Grandmaster Gupta ran out of steam and surrendered to Nakamura on a day when B Adhiban also did well to hold Levon Aronian of Armenia to a creditable draw.
With just three rounds to come in the toughest open tournament of the world, as many as six players share the lead on five points apiece. The leaders are Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France, Rodoslaw Wojtaszek of Poland, Wang Hao of China, Arkadij Naiditsch of Azerbaijan and the American duo of Jeffery Xiong and Nakamura.
Anand, along with compatriots Gupta and S P Sethuraman, shares the seventh spot on 4.5 points each and as the event reaches its business end the five-time World Champion will be looking forward to up the ante.
Playing with white against Fridman, Anand got in to a better position early in the game and capitalised to win a pawn for little compensation. However, Fridman proved he is a seasoned campaigner and did not give up for long and the game lasted 72 moves. (PTI)
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