Viswanathan Anand finishes third in Bilbao Masters Final

Anand will have to improve in the next tournament

Viswanathan Anand finished in joint third position at the Bilbao Masters Final, tied with China’s Liren Ding, reports Times of India. The Indian Grandmaster needed a win to have a statistical chance of coming second.

The final round saw a hard-fought match between Anand and Ding, where the former, playing black, overcame Ding’s English opening and gained the upper hand early. Both queens were lost and Anand squandered his edge as the game wore on.

Both their bishops only had minor pieces left for company in the dying moments of the game as try as Ding did, he could not get the better of the former World Champion. After sixty-nine moves, the game ended in a draw. This is Anand’s fifth draw of the tournament, which included an upset loss to Anand Giri of the Netherlands.

The Bilbao Masters becomes Anand’s second winless tournament after seven drawn games and two losses at the Sinquefield Cup in August this year.

Filipino-American Grandmaster Wesley So, who drew with Anand in the penultimate round, was crowned the new champion after defeating Dutch Grandmaster Anand Giri in the final. The deciding match, which was drawn at normal time, went into a four-minute blitz tiebreaker with a three second increment.

The first of the blitz games saw Giri fumble a play with his knight, which So parlayed into a win. Giri would let slip chances to equalise in the second game, which gave So the championship.

Both So and Giri matched each other play-for-play in their normal game, with Giri employing the Semi Slav defense against So’s clever start. Both were neck-and-neck througout the short match that ended in thirty four games.

The soccer scoring system didn’t seem to embolden the players to play out decisive games, with three points for a win and one for a loss. Only two of the twelve games saw definite results – Wesley So’s first round win over Liren Ding and Anand’s shock defeat to Giri.

The tournament ended with So and Giri with eight points apiece, having won one match and drawn five, and Anand and Ding on five points apiece. The next major tournament for Anand is the London Classic in December. The event, which is part of the Grand Chess Tour, will have a bonus prize fund for the overall winner of the three-part series.