Viswanathan Anand, Vidit Gujrathi win Round 6 of Pro Chess League, maintain top spot on points table

The pair of Viswanathan Anand and Vidit Gujrathi claimed a hard fought 9-7 victory over Volga Stormbringers to earn five points in Round six. (Reuters)

New Delhi: World rapid chess champion Viswanathan Anand and Grandmaster Vidit Gujrathi helped Mumbai Movers to hold on to their top position at the points tally in the Eastern Division of the Pro-Chess league on Thursday.

Anand and Gujrathi helped Mumbai defeat Volga Stormbringers with a 9-7 score to tally 5 points and stay ahead of Armenia Eagles and Delhi Dynamites by a point after the 6th round of the world’s first online chess league.

"We are a happy team as everything went off very well for us," said Anand, who made his debut in the league — in his team’s fifth round — last week. "I and Vidit were matching paces and the team was cruising smoothly with almost an unassailable lead going into the last round”.

Anand and Vidit did bulk of the scoring for Mumbai Movers, each scoring 3.5/4 while Rakesh Kulkarni brought home 1.5/4 and Sameer Kathmale scored 0.5/4. Anand said: "The half point garnered by Sameer was a vital one and Rakesh too played well’.

Three more rounds remain to be played in this 32 team event which is divided into four Divisions. The top four teams from each Division will advance to the next leg which will be played in a knock-out format.

The highlight of the round was the match between Anand and rapidly rising star and child prodigy Nodirbek Abdusattorov, the second youngest GM in the World. Against the super GM Andreikin, Anand did not press much and hardly had any difficulty in equalizing the game while Mikhail Demitov fell into a trap set up by Anand.

Vidit, on the other hand, played magnificently to defeat Andreikin in another crucial match. The Nashik-based Vidit was in an aggressive mood and wasted no time in launching a major offensive on Andreikin’s King and tilt the game in his favour.