Newly-crowned World Rapid Champion Viswanathan Anand won four games and drew six on Day 1 of the World Blitz Chess championship on Friday.
The marquee clash of the day, was when he crossed swords with World No 1 Magnus Carlsen. The Indian Grandmaster, who had beaten is more fancied opponent in the Rapid championship, could not outsmart his Norwegian rival this time around. The world champion came away from the clash with a draw in the eighth round.
With absolutely no time to relax after a brilliant show that saw him clinch the Rapid crown on Thursday, Anand began his Blitz challenge on a tentative note.
He drew with Jhao Jun of China in the opening round, before beating Vladislav Kovalev of Belarus. He then registered two more draws with Alexander Moiseenko of Ukraine and Nigel Short of England before beating Ivan Salgedo Lopez of Spain.
Anand came close to clinching another victory as he had a slightly better endgame against Gabrial Sargissian of Armenia, but the latter stood his ground to cull out a draw.
Round seven saw Anand beat Sergei Zhigalko of Belarus. However, in round eight he came up against Carlsen. He then beat Anton Demchenko in round nine and drew his tenth match against Liren Ding.
Anand suffered his first loss in the Championship after going down fighting against Ian Nepomniachtchi of Russia in game 11.
Anand now has seven points out of a possible 11 after 11 games. There are 11 more round to go in the tournament, which will end of Saturday.
The other Indians in fray, B Adhiban and P Harikrishna now have 6.5 points out of 10, while Santosh Gujrathi Vidit has 5.5 points. Surya Shekhar Ganguly and SP Sethuraman on 4.5 points each respectively.
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