Bilbao: Victory eluded Viswanathan Anand yet again and the world champion was held to a draw by Hikaru Nakamura of United States in the seventh round to remain joint second in the fourth Final Masters’ second leg.<\/p>\n
After his fifth draw, a sole victory and a loss, Anand remained on a 50 per cent score in the category-22 super tournament being played on a double round-robin format.<\/p>\n
In a shocking result, Ukrainian Vassily Ivanchuk suffered his first loss in the second leg at the hands of tailender Francisco Vallejo Pons of Spain. After a rocking start that fetched him three wins in the first half, and an another one against Nakamura, Ivanchuk was subdued by Pons in a tense game wherein he fell under time pressure.<\/p>\n
With just three rounds to come in the event, Ivanchuk still leads the tables with 13 points in his bag and the quartet of Anand, Magnus Carlsen of Norway, Levon Aronian of Armenia and Nakamura follow him five points behind.<\/p>\n
TOI<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bilbao: Victory eluded Viswanathan Anand yet again and the world champion was held to a draw by Hikaru Nakamura of United States in the seventh round to remain joint second in the fourth Final Masters’ second leg. After his fifth draw, a sole victory and a loss, Anand remained on a 50 per cent score […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-from-the-newspapers"],"yoast_head":"\n