Anand moves into second round

Defending champion Vishwanathan Anand outplayed the French rookie Olivier Touzane 1.5-0.5 in the tie-breaker to move into the second round of the World chess championship on Wednesday.

Anand will now meet Peter Heine Nielsen of Denmark, who also qualified for the World championships through the Internet qualifiers.

In the first round, Nielsen defeated Alexander Goldin of the United States.

With the first game stunner behind him, Anand can now relax and get down to business. The champion made no mention of the tension and pressure from the early revers, but it was obvious. After the win, he was his usual cheery self, and said, ''It happens. I played well enough in the second game and then it was all fine.''

There were just three Indian survivors after the first round and all three moved into second round through tie-breakers.

While Anand outplayed Touzane, Krishnan Sasikiran beat Vereslav Einghorn. Nisha Mohota was the lone Indian woman left, after she upset tenth seed Tatiana Stepovaia-Diachenko of Russia with a win in the second blitz game of the tie-breaker.

The first two games in the tie-breaker were drawn and so was the first blitz game, before Nisha broke the deadlock.

As expected, Anand's win brought a sigh of relief in the Indian camp, but many players in the men's and women's section made their way out of the championships. Among the men, it was Pendyala Harikrishna, Dibyendu Barua and Surya Sekhar Ganguly.

Among the women, only Nisha survived the first round. The other women Vijayalakshmi Subbaraman, Pallavi Shah and Aarthie Ramaswamy made an exit from the championship without making an impression.

It was a different Anand who came to the Kremlin hall for the second game. He had obviously shut out the bad memories of the first day. He was aggressive and took matters into his hand. He played the Benko Gambit against Touzane's queen pawn opening.

By the time the opening was through Anand was better, and in the middle game, he used his queen with devastating effect. He won a pawn and then a piece by the 20th move and the game itself when Touzane resigned on the 23rd move. Touzane later lost the tie-breaker and with that ended his brief encounter with fame at the ongoing championships.

Meanwhile, off the two former men's champions, who were also forced into the tie-breaker, one survived. Anatoly Karpov was stunned in the tie-breaker by China's Zheng Pengxiang, but Alexander Khalifman, who was held in both regulation games, beat India's Surya Sekhar Ganguly in the tie-breaker.

Khalifman, who survived Dibyendu Barua's tough challenge in 1999 before winning the first round in the tie-break and then went on win the world title itself, took the first step in similar way by beating another Indian.

Ganguly had held Khalifman to a second draw and confessed that he was hoping he had a better chance in the tie-breaker. In the second game they played just 13 moves in a queen's gambit accepted. But in the tie-breaker, it was not Ganguly's day. Khalifman outplayed the young lad 2-0 in the tie-breaker and quashed any hopes the Indian may have entertained.

Barua faced a Sicilian Najdorf from Lautier. Barua mishandled and lost a piece in the latter stages of the middle game, where he was clearly better. But the Indian national champion blundered and crashed out. He failed to even find a draw and lost his second game.

The message seemed to be that Harikrishna would take his time, but he was eliminated by the experienced Alexander Beliavsky of Slovenia.

In a Slav defence, Harikrishna equalised easily and played well. But then, Beliavsky's experience carried him through.

For India, the other good news, apart from Anand, came from Krishnan Sasikiran who played well to first get a draw and then won the tie-breaker.

There were two major casualties in the first round. First was the elimination of former World championship challenger Nigel Short, who drew his second game against Argentine Daniel Campora after losing the first.

Among the leading seeds making to the second round were Michael Adams, Alexander Morezovich, Veselin Topalov, Judit Polgar, Alexei Shirov and Vassily Ivanchuk.

Fifth seed Peter Leko of Hungary was another player to be shocked in the first round, but for him the big shock came in the second game. Needing only to draw to advance to second round, he was beaten by the 124th ranked South African Watu Kobese. That tied the match and in the tie-breaker, Leko bounced back winning 2-0 ensuring he was not added to the list of first round victims.

Among women, Alisa Galliamova, Maya Chiburdanidze and Xu Yuhua moved up.

Nisha, who needed only a draw to advance, erred in a good position and lost the second game to Tatiana Stepovaia of Russia. That sent the match into a tie-breaker and it went further into blitz. But finally Nisha brought in some cheer for the Indians by winning the second blitz game.

Needing to win to force the match to a tie-breaker, Pallavi Shah and Aarthie Ramaswamy inexplicably took draws rather easily and made their way. Also needing to win, but managing only a draw was Vijayalakshmi.

Pallavi drew her game with Bulgaria Antoaneta Stefanova in just 22 moves, while Aarthie took one move more at 23 against Georgian Nino Khurtsidze, before drawing and that was the end of the championships for both.

Vijayalakshmi, who had lost the first game, was unable to force matters against Dworakowska in the first round of the women's world championships for the second time in as many years.

Earlier report:
Anand wins second game
Anand shocked in opening round