Anand held by Svidler; Carlsen beats Karjakin

Sandnes (Norway): World champion Viswanathan Anand played out an easy draw against Russian Peter Svidler as black while world number one Magnus Carlsen turned the tables on Sergey Karjakin of Russia for a twist in the tale of Norway Chess 2013 Super Tournament.

After a shocking loss at the hands of American Hikaru Nakamura, Anand played it solid as black and did not have any problems in warding off the challenge of Svidler who played the white side of a Sicilian Najdorf. Carlsen, after four draws, was in a difficult situation against Karjakin but the Russian missed the thread and allowed a devastating attack on his king to suffer his first defeat after four victories. In other games of the fifth round, Jon Ludvig Hammer came to the Norwegian party defeating Wang Hao of China. Nakamura split the point with former world champion Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria while Azerbaijani Teimour Radjabov did not give scope of any action to Levon Aronian of Armenia. With four rounds remaining, Karjakin still leads the tournament on four points out of a possible five and he is now trailed by Carlsen and Nakamura a full point behind. Aronian, Anand, Radjabov and Svidler share the fourth spot on 2.5 points each a half point ahead of Topalov. Wang Hao and Hammer are joint ninth in the 10-player round-robin event having 1.5 points apiece in their kitty. Anand faced a recently popular system in the Sicilian Najdorf as black. The Indian ace yet again showed his fine preparation by going for a temporary pawn sacrifice early in the middle game and Svidler could find no way to push forward and reached a symmetrical structure after all queen side pawns were traded. PTI