Press Trust of India
St. Louis (USA), August 27: Former World Champion Viswanathan Anand played out a second straight draw by holding American Fabiano Caruana with ease in the fourth round of the Sinquefield Cup here Thursday.
Playing his third black in four games, Anand did not show any nervousness caused by losses with the slightly unfavourable colour in the game in round one and two.
After an easy draw with Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria, this was a confident performance by the Indian who is hoping for a comeback in the USD 3,00,000 prize money tournament.
The number of decisive games remained on the decline since the first round that produced all decisive results in the 10-player round-robin event. While there were three and two respectively in the subsequent rounds in the fourth round it got reduced to just one.
With just one point apiece so far, Anand and Caruana have hard work to do from the bottom of the tables. Anand chose the Semi Slav defense giving indication of a fight with black and Caruana chose a principled setup to gain control of the centre.
However, an opening improvement by Anand changed the evolution quickly as the Indian ace got a dynamic balance. As the middle game arrived, Anand had an isolated passed pawn in the centre and for the major part of the game revolved around that. As pawns changed hands on the queen side, Anand parted with a rook for Bishop to force equality.