Viswanathan Anand starts off with win in London Chess Classic

Anand started off in style winning the first game at London Chess Classic

Indian GrandMaster Viswanathan Anand put his disappointing loss in World Championship behind him as he started off with a win in the London Chess Classic. He beat local Luke McShane in the first game of group A and took the lead in the group with three points.

Anand, who celebrated his 44th birthday yesterday, made some deft moves towards the end to take the game away from McShane in the first game. Anand followed it up with a draw against English GM Michael Adams. Adams and Anand share the lead in the group with four points apiece.

The tournament’s scoring system follows a soccer style point system wherein the winner takes 3 points while a draw is worth one point to each player. The double round robin stage will see the top two players from each group go into the knockout stage.

Meanwhile, former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik won against Peter Svidler in Group B in a game that seemed to move towards a draw. Wild card entrant Jonathan Rowson of England won against Matthew Sadler from a similar situation in group B. The group C saw local Gawain Jones holding Hikaru Nakamura of United States to a draw while former world championship challenger Boris Gelfand of Israel qon against highest rated woman Judit Polgar of Hungary.

In the group D, English duo of Nigel Short and David Howell played out a draw while rating favourite Fabiano Caruana of Italy took the lead defeating Emil Sutovsky of Israel.