Anand starts in Style, beats Bacrot in M-tel Masters
By Vijay Kumar

Sofia Bulgaria 11th May 2006. The World Rapid Chess Champion India’s Viswanathan Anand played with Black pieces against the Frenchman Etienne Bacrot in the first Round of the 10 round championship of Mtel Masters 2006 which started here in Sofia.

In this Six players tournament in which each plays twice against his opponent is a category 20 championship and is considered one of the strongest events of the World besides Corus and Linares.

Bacrot playing with white pieces opened with d 4 and Anand replied with Nf6 taking the game to Queen’s Indian pattern. Both the players moved their pieces very cautiously in this complicated game in which Anand sacrificed a pawn to improve his position but slowly the Frenchman took an upper hand and Anand fought for equality. On the 22nd move Etienne moved his Queen to Qxg8+ but Anand averted the check taking his king to Ke7. It was only after the Frenchman committed a blunder on the 25th move that gave Anand a chance to improve his positions and slowly the Chess Wizard played a tactical game to bring down Bacrot’s fort to win the game in 54 moves

Speaking to Vijay Kumar immediately after the game Anand Said “ I must say I was surprised because I thought I was defending a worse position, but suddenly after Re5 it is already very tricky for white. Perhaps he should take and go for Nf3 and make a draw that way. “

In the other two games the Chief Arbiter realized that the games are heading towards no result and hence he declared the games as drawn.

World Champion Veselin Topalov played against Peter Svidler in a Sicilian Najdorf game, while the former World champion Ruslan Ponomariov played with white against Gata Kamsky, who after a lapse of many years has again started playing competitive chess.