Sasikiran shocks Anand
in second round

In a major upset, defending champion Vishwanathan Anand of India was shocked by compatriot Krishnan Sasikiran in a second round league match in the second World Cup chess tournament in Hyderabad on Friday.

Deviating from the regular openings, the young Chennai Grandmaster surprised Anand by adopting the Reti opening variation and caught the super Grandmaster, with an ELO rating of over 2700, on the wrong foot many a time to enforce tactical supremacy and positional advantage which forced Anand resign after 53 moves.

In other matches of the day, Koneru Humpy scored an emphatic victory over D Stepovia of Russia while Indians Bhagyashri Thipsey, Swati Ghate and S Vijaylaxmi lost their respective matches.

After his maiden victory over Anand, and perhaps the greatest victory of his career, an elated Sasikiran said he benefitted from the errors made by the world champion.

"Anand was very unclear in his pawn sacrifices and he missed some very simple moves," the 21-year old said.

Another Indian in the fray, Surya Sekhar Ganguly defeated second seeded Alexander Morozevich of Russia in a Ruy Lopez opening.

Though the Russain tried to rip open Ganguly's defence he could not succeed and surrendered after getting himself into a hopeless situation.

Anand, with half a point from two games, now needs to win at least two of his next three matches to stay in the reckoning.

Playing a rare Petroff defence, Humpy emerged victorious against Stepovia, who tried to attack her kingside constantly. However, mid-game manouevres swung the advantage in favour of the Indian.

Pendyala Harikrishna's prospects of moving to the next round suffered a serious setback when he lost to Alexander Beliavsky of Russia. Now, the Andhra Pradesh Grandmaster will have to win his next three league matches to keep his hopes alive.

Fifteen-year old Teimour Radjabov (Azerbaijan) preaviled over Wato Kobese of South Africa in a group B game involving Slav defence to take his points tally to 1.5.

"I had a better positional advantage and employed tactical play to win the game," said Radjabov.

Brazilian Giovani Vescovi drew with Ivanchuk Vassily of Ukraine after 50 moves in a rarely placed Scottish opening game.

In a Group A match, Jing Chuan Ye of China settled for a quick draw after 11 moves against Macieja Bartilomeij of Poland while world champion Chinese Chen Zhu, who lost her opening match against S Meenakshi of India, called truce after 16 moves against compatriot Pin Wang.

Meenakshi also drew against Arathie Ramaswami to take her points tally to 1.5.

Earlier report
Day 1: Meenakshi beats world champ; Anand splits point