Stavenger (Norway): Indian Chess Cheese Viswanathan Anand defeated Maxime Vachier-Lagrave in 40 moves in the first round of the classic section of the Norwegian chess tournament.
The win over the French player late on Tuesday enabled the Indian GM to take 3 points.
American Wesley So defeated Teimur Rajdabov in the first round to level with Anand, while Magnus Carlsen had to settle for a draw with China’s Wang Had.
In the blitz event played prior to the Classical, Anand had shocked world champion Carlsen in round seven en route to fourth.
However, the former world champion suffered defeats to Anish Giri (Netherlands) and Vachier-Lagrave in the fourth and ninth rounds respectively, finishing with 5 points in the 10-player blitz event.
So finished at the top of the Blitz standings with 6.5 points, one ahead of Carlsen while Giri took third. He thus earned the right to choose his starting number for the classic event.
In the classic event, the players played an Armeggedon game (sudden death) in the event of a tie.
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