World chess champion Viswanathan Anand rose to his glory after the miserable results of the past two rounds. He hammered Alexander Morozevich of Russia in the third round of the Tal Memorial Chess tournament still in progress.
Following a grim loss against Fabiano Caruana of Italy in the opener and a serious draw in the second round against Russian champion Dmitry Andreikin, Anand came back to his form against Morozevich and ousted him.
In an amazing round, Caruana won a drawn endgame against World no.1 Magnus Carlsen of Norway. In another game, Hikaru Nakamura of United States registered his second win on the trot at the expense of Sergey Karjakin of Russia.
Eventually, Carlsen lost his joint lead while Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan, Boris Gelfand of Israel, Caruana and Nakamura emerged as the latest joint leaders on two points following the end of the third round.
Particularly, Anand shares the fifth spot now along with Andreikin and Carlsen on 1.5 points each while Morozevich and Karjakin are next in standings clinching one point per head. On the other side, Vladimir Kramnik of Russia continued to find himself in an unfamiliar last spot following his first draw in the tournament where he signed peace with Mamedyarov. It is estimated that there are six rounds still remaining and surely a lot more are expected in the strongest super tournament of recent times.
Carlsen losing against Caruana has totally changed the game. Anand was at his best form against Morozevich out of a Ruy Lopez opening. Opting to play white, the Indian star got some play rolling in his favor post a pawn sacrifice by the Russian. In addition, clinging on the extra material proved decisive for Anand once Morozevich attempted to make a foray in his ground. At the end, result was not in doubt as Anand proceeded with the technicalities in a perfect fashion.
To be precise, Carlsen allowed Caruana to equalize comfortably with black and further attempted to complicate matters in the middle game. Undoubtedly, the Italian was quite graceful in the task and won a pawn confidently. In fact, the technicalities were far from over as the resulting endgame was a theoretical draw. However, another error from Carlsen led to a lost position by force. Caruana danced his way to victory and of course in the current live ratings proved to be the new world number three.
On the other side, Nakamura dominated from the very beginning till the end in a Gruenfeld defense by Karjakin. The American unusually moved order and Karjakin was caught off guard beyond doubt. Notably the Russian's reaction was questionable in the opening and although he hauled a solid blockade on White's passed pawn in the centre, Nakamura built up his initiative through a sequence of clever bishop tricks. The American’s technique was superb and he wrapped up the game without Karjakin ever having a real opportunity. The game will restart after the first rest day scheduled on Sunday.
