Anand demolishes Caruana in style

The stunning victory before Monday’s rest day took Anand’s tally to three points, same as Magnus Carlsen who was the day’s other winner. They share the second spot behind leader Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (3.5 points).

Viswanathan Anand during his match against Fabiano Caruana

It was vintage Viswanathan Anand on view as he outclassed World No. 3 Fabiano Caruana in just 29 moves, unleashing a short sequence of brilliant moves in the fifth round of Sinquefield Cup chess tournament here on Sunday.

The stunning victory before Monday’s rest day took Anand’s tally to three points, same as Magnus Carlsen who was the day’s other winner. They share the second spot behind leader Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (3.5 points).

A bishop sacrifice, followed by a queen-offer in this English Four Knights game brought forth Anand’s ability to calculate deep after Caruana ambitiously attacked the Indian’s king-pawn in the middle-game.

After gaining a central pawn on the 20th move, Anand saw the precise continuation and sacrificed the bright-squared bishop on the 23rd move. Off the next move, Anand offered the queen. By this time, Caruana had realised he had very few option.

Caruana delayed capturing the queen but Anand proceeded with the simple checkmating plan. Caruana resigned when staring at a forced checkmate that would have followed seven moves later.

In a clash involving world’s top-two ranked players, Carlsen punished Wesley So for an early mistake and won in 29 moves.

The results:

Fifth round: Viswanathan Anand (3) bt Fabiano Caruana (USA, 2.5); Wesley So (USA, 2) lost to Magnus Carlsen (Nor, 3); Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (Fra, 3.5) drew with Levon Aronian (Arm, 2.5); Sergey Karjakin (Rus, 2.5) drew with Ian Nepomniachtchi (Rus, 2); Hikaru Nakamura (USA, 2) drew with Peter Svidler (Rus, 2).