Anand loses to Grischuk, slips to ninth spot

 

 Viswanathan Anand continued his roller-coaster ride in the London Chess Classic as he went down to Russian Grandmaster Alexander Grischuk in the sixth round.

After drawing the first three rounds, this was Anand's third decisive result in a row and second where the Indian ace ended on the receiving end. It turned out to be a costly blow as Anand now finds himself in sole ninth spot in the 10-player round-robin tournament.

Benefitting from his first victory in the tournament, Grischuk joined Anish Giri of Hland, Hikaru Nakamura of United States and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France in lead on four points out of a possible seven.

Levon Aronian of Armenia, World champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway, Michael Adams of England and Fabiano Caruana of United States share the fifth spot jointly on 3.5 points each.

With 2.5 points in his kitty, Anand is ahead of Bulgarian Veselin Topalov by a full point but is now in a desperate situation in the $300000 prize money tournament.

On what turned out to be another draw-marred day, again four out of five games ended in draws with only Grischuk and Anand producing a decisive result.