Anand concedes draw against Vajda

Gibraltar 2016 started almost the same way Goodricke, Kolkata did 23 years ago for Viswanathan Anand. The World champion played an International Master (Lazarne Vajda) rated 400 points below him and drew his first-round game like he did in Goodricke Open where he drew India’s Anup Deshmukh.

Goodricke 1992 was the last open tournament Anand played in India. The five-time world champion had flown in directly from Reggio Emilia to Kolkata after beating Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov to win the Italian tournament. 

On Tuesday, Vajda played simple chess on the third board, adopting the solid Slav Defence and looked for simplification wherever possible. After 45 moves, only the bishops remained on the board and to her credit, Vajda had done her part exceptionally well. 

On the adjacent board, India’s Pentala Harikrishna too met a player rated 400 points below him, Alan Tate of Scotland and outplayed him with black pieces. Hari got a clear advantage in the middle game and tactically defeated Tate. Top seed Hikaru Nakamura of US and second seed Maxime Vachier Lagrave of France moved past their first-round opponents easily. 

Curiously, Anand’s former second Surya Sekhar Ganguly also conceded a draw in the first round. German Matthias Bach looked down in the dumps by move 20 and Ganguly missed a good continuation on move 22. After that there was only a draw for the Indian. 

Vidit Gujrathi pulled off an easy victory against Rolf Bergstrom, S P Sethuraman defeated Pratyusha Bodda while Abhijeet Gupta was too good for Spaniard Pereda Carlos Nava.