Francisco Vallejo Pons gave a tough fight but Viswanathan Anand managed to blank the Spaniard 2-0 in the eighth round to be placed second in the Amber Blindfold and Rapid Chess tournament.
MONACO: Francisco Vallejo Pons gave a tough fight but Viswanathan Anand managed to blank the Spaniard 2-0 in the eighth round to be placed second in the Amber Blindfold and Rapid Chess tournament underway here.
After a rather subdued start, the victory against Vallejo enabled Anand to narrow the gap between him and sole leader Vladimir Kramnik of Russia by 1.5 points.
The Indian ace, however, stretched his lead to a full point in the rapid section over nearest rival Levon Aronian of Armenia.
Kramnik continued his domination in the blindfold section and this time his friend Boris Gelfand of Israel was on the receiving end against the wrath of the Russian in this variant of the game where only the last move played is visible to the players on an empty chess board.
The seventh victory in eight games in blindfold victory took Kramnik to 7.5 points in this section and it seems there is little chance of catching up with him here.
In the rapid section Kramnik has 4.5 points out of a possible eight that makes his overall tally 12 points.
While Anand is on 10.5 points with three rounds or six more games in the unique annual event, Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine, who suffered a jolt at the hands of Magnus Carlsen of Norway, is now in sole third spot a half point behind the Indian in the overall standings.
Another half point behind is Aronian and Russian Peter Svidler who defeated Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan in both games.
In the rapid section, Anand seems to be heading for victory but for winning this event for the sixth time in combined standings he will have to score heavily in the last three rounds.
In the blindfold, Anand is on joint sixth spot now having 4 points in his bag.
Monday being the final rest day of the event, the games will resume late on Tuesday for the final leg.
Vallejo Pons has worked with Anand for some time in the past and it was another fine result by the Indian considering that his opponent knew a lot about him. For the records, Anand has never lost to Vallejo in the 15 games the two had played.
The blindfold affair between the two was fought out in a Berlin defense wherein Anand had a tangible advantage right from the opening but a late counter play bid by Vallejo was not met effectively.
"I was fine, except for the fact that I couldn't see the pieces," Anand said.
As it happened, after getting sufficient play for the lost pawns, Vallejo lost track of the on-board happenings for the last time and Anand converted his extra material in to a full point.
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