Anand bounces back, beats Morozevich in 3rd round

World champion Viswanathan Anand bounced back from the disappointing results of the past two rounds to defeat Russian Alexander Morozevich in a positional skirmish in the third round of the Tal Memorial chess tournament now in progress here.
After a loss against Fabiano Caruana of Italy in the opener and a tense draw in the second round against Russian champion Dmitry Andreikin, the world champion showed form against Morozevich and outplayed him when it mattered the most to move back to a 50 per cent score in one of the strongest tournaments of recent times.
On what turned out to be another amazing round, Caruana backed his instincts to win a drawn endgame against world number one Magnus Carlsen of Norway while Hikaru Nakamura of United States scored his second win on the trot at the expense of Sergey Karjakin of Russia.

As a result Carlsen lost his joint lead and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan, Boris Gelfand of Israel Caruana and Nakamura emerged as new joint leaders on two points after the end of the third round.
Anand shares the fifth spot now along side Andreikin and Carlsen on 1.5 points apiece while Morozevich and Karjakin are next in standings having one point each.
Vladimir Kramnik of Russia continued to find himself in an unfamiliar last spot after his first draw in the tournament wherein he signed peace with Mamedyarov.

With six rounds remaining there is obviously a lot to come in one of the strongest super tournament of recent times.

However, with Carlsen losing against Caruana the talk of the Norwegian being invincible has suffered a considerable setback.
Anand was at his technical best against Morozevich out of a Ruy Lopez opening. Playing white, the Indian star got some play rolling in his favour post a pawn sacrifice by the Russian and clinging on the extra material proved decisive for Anand once Morozevich tried to make a foray in his ground.