Anand held by Adams; joint second now

World champion Viswanathan Anand played out a draw with English grandmaster Michael Adams to be joint second after the sixth round of Grenke Chess Classic now underway here. With his fifth draw out of six games, Anand took his tally to 3.5 points out of a possible six and was joined by German grandmaster Arkadij Naiditsch in the second spot after the latter came up with a sterling effort to beat compatriot Daniel Fridman.

The other game of category-19 tournament between Fabiano Caruana of Italy and Georg Meier of Germany ended in a draw leaving the former still in front with just four rounds to come.

Caruana on four points enjoys a slender half point lead over Naiditsch and Anand while Fridman and Adams share the fourth spot on 2.5 points apiece. Not far behind is Meier, who has two points.

Anand played his third white in the tournament but could not make much impression on Adams who felt the heat but was never in any serious problems.

For the records, it was a closed Ruy Lopez in which Adams was saddled with a passive knight on the queen side. However it was not much as Anand himself noted in the post game chat, “black can live with this weakness until the queenside opens up,” he said.

According to the world champion, his 22nd move was not the best when he developed his queen.

“Usually when you make sophisticated moves like this it usually means that you have lost track somewhere”, Anand said.

As it happened in the game, Adams equalised without much ado thereafter and subsequent exchanges led to a rook and pawns endgame with no chances for either side. The draw was agreed to on move 41.