Radjabov shocks Anand

MAINZ, (Germany): Viswanathan Anand suffered a shocking defeat at the hands of Grandmaster Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan in the second game of the Grenkeleasing Rapid world championship at the main event of Chess Classic.

After the first game ended in a draw, Anand, the world rapid champion, missed out on some promising continuations in the middle game and in the end went down fighting against his younger opponent for whom this was a first victory over Anand in a rapid chess game.

The Azerbaijani now leads 1.5-0.5 in this 8-games match.  The four-day main event also saw Chess960 world champion Peter Svidler struggling to defend his title as he lost both games of the opening day against World cup champion Levon Aronian of Armenia.

Chess960 is a variant of the game in which the position of the pieces are randomly shuffled before the start of the game.

On Thursday, Harikrishna became the junior champion in this variant of the game by defeating Arkadij Naiditsch of Germany 4.5-3.5 in the 8-games match.

For Anand, who is looking for his sixth straight title here, the first day turned out to be quite tough as Radjabov matched him in style despite being a couple of pawns less in the second game.

Earlier, the two played out a Semi-Slav defense wherein Radjabov, white, went for an in-vogue variation to complicate matters.