Nenad Sulava of Croatia plays chess in France
Anand enters Corsica chess final
[Sports India]: Corsica (France), Nov 4 : Indian grandmaster Viswanathan Anand entered the final of the Corsica Masters chess tournament with a comprehensive 2-0 win over Etienne Bacrot of France in the semi-finals.
If Anand goes on beat Russia’s Sergei Rublevsky in the final, it will be his fifth straight Corsica title.
Rublevsky beat Alexander Motylev 1.5-0.5 in the other semi-final Wednesday night.
NIIT brand ambassador Anand has now won five of the six games he has played in three matches here.
His only draw was against Nenad Sulava of Croatia in the pre-quarters after which he blanked Mikhail Gurevich 2-0 and now Bacrot.
Anand outplayed local hope and French No. 1 Bacrot in front of over 500 spectators at the Bastia theatre.
Anand first demolished Bacrot with black in the first game and then crushed the Frenchman with white in the second game for good measure.
In the crucial first game, Anand surprised with the Marshall Gambit of the Ruy Lopez. Bacrot declined and entered an obscure sideline with 9.d4.
He soon landed in an inferior position, and Anand wrapped things up on the queenside.
The other semi-final was much harder-fought, with the all-Russian duel between Motylev and Rublevsky came down to the final seconds.
As the score suggests, former Russian champion Motylev went from forcing mate to being mated on a single move at the end.
Anand and Rublevsky have met in a rapid match before, way back in 1996 when they played in the Moscow PCA Grand Prix.
Anand needed to win a blitz tiebreak game to go through. The 30-year-old Rublevsky is one of the many very strong “second tier” Russian GMs.
–Indo-Asian News Service
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