Anand outsmarts Van Wely; leads with Carlsen

Netherlands, Jan 20:
World champion Viswanathan Anand outsmarted Loek Van Wely of Holland to come back in joint lead after the seventh round of the 75th Tata Steel Chess tournament here.
After two draws against Magnus Carlsen of Norway and compatriot P Harikrishna post the first rest day, Anand broke through the defences of Van Wely in style showing fine technique to take his points tally to five.
Magnus Carlsen played out a draw with Hungarian Peter Leko to match Anand on points and the two leaders are now followed by Hikaru Nakamura of United States and Sergey Karjakin of Russia a half point behind.
With six rounds still to come in the 14-players round-robin tournament, Harikrishna shares the fifth spot with Levon Aronian of Armenia on four points.
Left with some catching up to do is Fabiano Caruana of Italy on three points sharing the eighth spot with Van Wely and Chinese Wang Hao while Dutch duo of Anish Giri and Erwin L’Ami along side Yifan Hou of China are in 11th spot with 2.5 points apiece.
Ivan Sokolov of Holland, who drew with Harikrishna in seventh round, is at the bottom of the tables on just two points from his seven games.
After two days of many decisive games, the lull was back and as only Anand and Nakamura scored victories. The American was quite happy to beat his nemesis Wang Hao.
Aronian came close to winning his third game in a row but Sergey Karjakin got off the hook in the final hour. Yifan Hou pressed but could only share the point with Caruana while L’Ami and Giri played an easy draw between themselves. (PTI)

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