MOSCOW, Dec 6: India’s Viswanathan Anand took a large step towards qualifying for the semifinals of the official FIDE world chess championship on Saturday, beating Spain’s Alexei Shirov in the first of two games, while his other rivals all drew.

Anand, playing white, beat Shirov in 44 moves and will play a return game playing black Friday.

The three other quarter-final games, between Boris Gelfand (Israel) and Peter Svidler (Russia), Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukraine) and Yevgeny Bareev (Russia), and Joel Lautier (France) and Vasily Ivanchuk (Ukraine) all ended in draws, the first-named playing white.

The semifinals, starting Saturday, will be over four games each.

The winners of these will meet in an eight-game match in January for the official world title, currently held by Anand. —AFP