Anand crushes Svidler to come back in hunt in Candidates

Five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand staged a brilliant comeback by crashing through the defences of Peter Svidler of Russia in the sixth round of Candidates Chess tournament here.
The mixed-bag for Anand continued in the biggest challenge of the year as the Indian ace got what he was looking for with white in nearly a lop-sided encounter against the seven-time Russia champion.
The win helped Anand inched up to joint second spot in overall standings on 3.5 points out of a possible seven, while Sergey Karjakin of Russia survived almost a lost position against Fabiano Caruana of United States.
Anand with 3.5 can look up to the coming games with confidence. The Indian ace has been under pressure to perform in similar circumstance for quite some time now.

Caruana obviously missed some simple opportunities. The American who recently changed federation from Italy was on his toes to figure out a winning continuation but on this day he could not figure that out when it mattered.
Anand has had some remarkable results against Svidler and the Indian ace lived up to the reputation in an Anti-Marshall Ruy Lopez where the Indian played white. Anand got his superiority in the centre as the game progressed and then went for a well-calculated King side attack that put Svidler on the back foot.

As it happened in the game, Svidler fought but only till 24 moves when Anand made sure there were no defences left.

(REOPENS SPF 1)
In the other game of the day, Dutch Anish Giri played out his sixth draw in the event when he could not break the defences of Bulgarian Veselin Topalov.
After an irregular queen pawn game, Giri was slightly better in the endgame with an extra pawn but Topalov hung in with precise defense to steer the game to a draw.
The Candidates that will decide the next challenger to world champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway still has eight more rounds to come and the battle Royale will resume after the second rest day in the 420000 Euros prize money event.