Ivanchuk to meet Anand in semis

Defending champion Vishwanathan Anand will face Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine in the semi-finals of the World chess championship.

Ivanchuk defeated Joel Lautier in a tense tie-breaker to earn a berth in the semis.

The Indian will be the only player of non-Soviet origin in the last four stage of the event.

Anand, the NIIT brand ambassador, was the only player not to be extended into the tie-breaker. This was the third time in five rounds that Anand won before the tie-break. Anand has so far lost just one game, the first of the championship, to lesser-known Olivier Touzane of France.

During the day it seemed that he might run into yet another Frenchman, his third of the tournament. But Lautier was ultimately put out by Ivanchuk in the tie-break. Thus ended Lautier's fine run, which included wins over Dibyendu Barua of India, Sergey Shipov of Russia, 1999 World champ Alexander Khalifman of Russia and Predrag Nikolic of Bosnia-Herzogovina.

In the other semi-final, another Ukrainian Ruslan Ponmariov will meet Russian Peter Svidler. Ponmariov outplayed Evegeny Bareev of Russia 2-0 in the rapid games of the tie-break, while Svidler won 1.5-0.5 in the blitz section of the tie-breaker against Boris Gelfand, after tying both regaultion games and rapid games of the first set of tie-break.

In the women's section, Alexandra Kosteniuk first hit back with a win in the second game to level matters and take her match against China's Xu Yuhua into the tie-breaker. In the tie-breaker, Kosteniuk, who has already knocked out two big stars, Alisa Galliamova and Almira Skripchenko added Yuhua to the list.

But the Chinese did manage one berth in the final, when Zhu Chen found her way past former World champion and veteran Maya Chiburdanidze of Georgia. The two played out a second draw in regulation game, but in the tie-breaker, Zhu Chen drew the first and won the second to move into the women's title match.

The men's semi-finals and the women's final will be played simultaneously and the matches will be of four games each.

The winners of the two semi-finals will clash in the title match, to be held in Moscow, from January 16.

Earlier reports:
Anand reaches semi-finals
Anand beats Shirov in first game
Anand beats Dreev to enter quarters
Anand faces tough road ahead
Quick draw for Anand in round 4
Anand through to last 16
Anand settles for draw, Van Wely loses
Anand enters third round
Anand scores quick win
Anand moves into second round
Anand wins second game
Anand shocked in opening round