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| December 8, 2001 | Saturday | Ramazan 22, 1422 |
Anand advances to semis
MOSCOW, Dec 7: Defending FIDE world chess champion Viswanathan Anand of India advanced to the semifinals of the FIDE World Chess Federation tournament with a draw against Alexei Shirov of Spain.
With black, Anand chose the French Defense, and Shirov conceded the draw on move 32. Anand remarked about the final position, “He can play on but it’s difficult to see what he can do.”
In last year’s finals in Tehran, Anand crushed Shirov with three wins and a draw in four games.
The other three games in the men’s section were drawn, and the tie-breaks were scheduled for Friday night.
The tournament is organized as a series of two-game elimination matches, with rapid and blitz playoffs in the case of ties. The finals are to be held in Moscow in January.
Sixty-four top women players are also competing under the same format for the women’s world championship. The world’s strongest woman player, Judit Polgar of Hungary, played in the men’s championship and was eliminated in the second round.
Seventeen-year-old Russian wonderkid Alexandra Kosteniuk of Russia evened her semifinal match with a win against China’s Xu Yuhua. Former world champion Maya Chiburdanidze of Georgia drew with Zhu Chen of China. The playoff for both matches was scheduled for Friday evening.
The semifinals and the women’s finals, both of which will consist of four game matches, begin on Saturday.
A few blocks away from the FIDE tournament, the two top-rated players in the world, former world champion Garry Kasparov and Braingames world champion Vladimir Kramnik, are playing in a rival event and were scheduled to play three rapid games on Friday.
So far, they have drawn four games at regular time control. Kramnik predicted that the rapid games will be “very interesting for amateurs who just like to see time trouble and mistakes.”
Kasparov and Kramnik will play 16 more games, six rapid games and 10 blitz games for a total purse of dlrs 500,000.
Chess has had two world champions since 1993, when then-world champion Garry Kasparov broke away from FIDE and formed the Professional Chess Association. The PCA was dissolved in 1998.—APP/AP
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