Corus 07: Tense battles, Anand and Svidler win

Corus Chess Tournament Wijk aan Zee 14 – 30 January 2005 Official web site – Live coverage – All ChessBase reports

Round seven

The big open tournament, next to the main events at the top of the hall

The playing area for the B and A Groups in Wijk aan Zee

Peter Svidler (above right) "miniatured" Loek van Wely (left), as the official web site imaginatively describes it. The St Petersburg GM won his first game this year in Wijk, in just twenty moves.

Vishy Anand (above right) is back and he's angry. In his game against Cuban GM Lazaro Bruzon (left) on the black side of a Catalan Anand played very agressively, gained a very pleasant position and, after a dubious queen trade by his opponent on move 37 was able to wrap up the game with consumate ease.

Okay, young man, let me show you a few things in the Catalan!

This is Anand's third win in succession, and we find he has jumped from somewhere at the bottom of the table into the joint lead with Adams, Topalov and Leko. Garry Kasparov, who is keenly following the games on the Playchess.com server, thinks a plus four result for Vishy is quite likely.

Veselin Topalov gave Alexander Morozevich his second draw in this event.

Peter Leko and Michael Adams drew a tough fighting game in 41 moves.

This is one tough cookie to beat: Super-GM Judit Polgar

Nigel Short knows he has a tough fight against her. The game was drawn

The game of the day was Ruslan Ponomariov (above right) vs Vladimir Kramnik (left). The Ukraine ex FIDE world champion spurned clear drawing continuation and kept playing very dangerously for a win. In the end the game has ended in a very tense draw.

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