Former World champion Vishwanathan Anand proved too good for an over ambitious Grandmaster Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria, inflicting a 60-move defeat on him in the second round of the 65th Corus chess tournament in Wijk Aan Zee (The Netherlands) on Monday.
Defending champion GM Evgeny Bareev of Russia continued with his winning ways to outclass GM Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan and move into sole lead with a perfect 2/2 score.
Anand and GM Anatoly Karpov of Russia follow the leader half a point behind while a pack of seven are tied with one point each. Eleven more rounds remain to be played in this 14-player all-play-all category-19 tournament.
In what turned out to be one of the most unexpected results of round two, and perhaps of the tournament, World champion Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine defeated top seed and Braingames World champion Vladimir Kramnik in an almost one-sided game.
Ponomariov, smarting under a disastrous loss against Bareev in the first round, bounced back to join the one-pointers.
For Anand, it turned out to be an easy outing as Topalov's home work did not yield him anything decisive. It was a Petroff defence where the Indian ace, playing black, had a level position after the opening and appeared in fine fettle even as Topalov went for an ambitious exchange sacrifice (Rook for a Bishop) on his 17th move.
The idea was untried so far and Anand had to work out things over the board. As it turned out in the game, Anand obtained a central passed pawn in the ensuing middle game and sacrificed that to open lines where his rooks could operate on.
He then opened the queenside with thematic manoeuvres, exchanged queens by force and eventually squeezed out all the resources of Bulgarian.
Topalov called it a day after 61 moves, giving Anand his first victory of the year.
Ponomariov was a man with a mission in his game against Kramnik. Having lost game one -- he later blamed it on tiredness -- he was greatly relieved after scoring his first victory in the very first encounter against Kramnik under Classical Chess time control.
Playing white, the Ukrainian opened with the Queen pawn and faced the Nimzo Indian defence. Kramnik suffered for the major part of the game as Ponomariov gained space on the queenside and pressed-on, undeterred by exchanges of minor piecat regular intervals.
Kramnik hung in there with just about the right defensive moves but was in for a rude shock after committing a blunder on the 37th move that allowed the invasion of white's queen near his own king. The game lasted just two more moves.
Bareev appears to be settling in the form he displayed last year. He gave a lesson to Teimour Radjabov who played the black side of a King's Indian defense.
The Russian employed the Classical set up and gradually ripped open the queen side before Radjabov could make a foray on the other flank. Radjabov did not last long and resigned in 32 moves.
Karpov was involved in a hard-fought draw against Latvia born Spaniard Alexei Shirov. The queen's gambit accepted gave a semblance of advantage to Karpov, white, but subsequent exchanges led to a rook and pawns endgame where the peace treaty was signed after 50 moves.
Having just broken in to the 2700 ElO league, Judit Polgar of Hungary found the going tough against Dutch GM Loek Van Wely but a determined defence ensured her half a point in a 63-move drawn encounter.
Russian GM Alexander Grischuk had little trouble in getting an easy draw with black against local star Jan Timman while Ukranian Ivanchuk decided to play safe in a complicated position against Michal Krasenkow of Poland.
In the Grandmaster group 'B' tournament being played simultaneously, former World Junior girls' champion GM Koneru Humpy played out her second draw in succession.
Up against youngest ever GM Sergey Karjakin of Ukraine, who turned 13 on Sunday, Humpy pressed hard for an advantage but was surprised by a queen sacrifice.
However, with a timely manoeuvre, she forced the draw.
GMs Zhang Zhong of China, Jonny Hector of Sweden and Arkadij Naiditsch of Germany shared the lead in this section with 1.5 points apiece while Humpy, Karjakin and six others are closely behind with one point each in their kitty.
