Anand draws, moves to 3rd place, Negi third in Group C

Wijk Aan Zee (Netherlands), Jan 23 (UNI) Viswanathan Anand and three other Indians in the fray drew their respective matches but managed to improve their standings at the end of the 9th round of the 70th Corus Grandmasters chess tournament here.

World champion Anand signed a quick draw with Israel's Boris Gelfand in just 25 moves from a Cataland opening but climbed to be tied third place with five points.

In group B, Pentala Harikrishna and Koneru Humpy played and drew against each other in ninth round and in Group C, Parimarjan Negi was held to a draw by Mark van der Werf.

For Anand it has been a great move upwards after losing his opening game against Teimour Radjabov. Since then he has won two and drawn five.

He shares the third spot with Vladimir Kramnik, who lost his ninth round to Veselin Topalov, Teimour Radjabov and Michael Adams.

The Indian ace is half a point behind leaders Magnus Carlsen and Lev Aronian. Carlsen blundered and lost his ninth round game to Peter Leko While Hairkrishna is tied for fourth place Humpy is tenth. In Group C, Negi is tied for third place. Negi's rise is also phenomenal as he began with two losses.

Anand and Gelfand repeated their game from the Mexico world championship tournament.

The Israeli GM tried to improve with 11.Re1 but the world champion did not have any special problems. Playing with black in a Catalan Opening, Anand forced white to hold the balance.

In group B, Hari and Humpy played a 28-move draw in Gruenfeld.

Hari now has five points in tied fourth place, while Humpy has four points in tied 10 th. Sergei Movsesian leads with 6.5 points and Etienne Bacrot is half a point behind at six.

In Group C, Negi also playing black also drew in a Gruenfeld in 56 moves. He has 5.5 points and shares third place with Friso Nijboer.

The leader is Fabiano Caruana with seven points. Dmitri Reinderman is second with 6.5 points.

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