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November 27, 2001
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Anand shocked in opening roundDefending champion Vishwanathan Anand suffered a shocking defeat, going down to lowly-rated Olivier Touzane of France with white pieces in the opening round of the World chess championship in Moscow on Tuesday. Two of the four Indian girls also lost their opening games, as Nisha Mohota and Aarthie Ramaswamy emerged as the only Indian winners on the first day of the championship. Touzane, with an Elo rating of 2382, is one of the eight players who qualified for the event through the worldwide Internet championship. Indeed, the form book was thrown out of the window as, despite playing with the favourable colour, the tournament favourite and top seed was forced to bite the dust by an opponent ranked the lowest in the 128-player field in the knock-out competion. Anand will now have to win the second game and the tie-break against Touzane to stay in contention for the title. India suffered another setback when Dibyendu Barua lost to formidable Grandmaster Joel Lautier of France. Playing white in the first game of the two-game mini-match, Anand opened with his favourite king pawn and was up against the fashionable Petroff defence that is employed at the top level quite frequently. The middlegame was fiercely fought as Anand gave an exchange for two pawns to get his pieces rolling on the queenside, but the Olivier was quite up to the task as he brought his rooks out in the open to corner the dangerous Anand pawn on the seventh rank. The credits were soon stolen from Anand as Olivier got in to the groove on both flanks and extended his play to the king side, wherein his timely return of exchange netted him a winning queen and pawns endgame. Anand soon found the ice melting under his feet and there was no chance in his position when he called it a day on the 39th move. However, India's other players did well to finish with draws. Young Indian Grandmaster Pendyala Harikrishna (2522) drew with Alexander Beliavsky (2659) of Slovakia after 33 moves in his first game while Grandmaster Krishnan Sasikiran (2589) was also forced to split the point after drawing with Grandmaster Vereslav Eingorn (2598) of the Ukraine after 25 moves. Intenational Master Surya Sekhar Ganguly (2464) came up with a creditable performance to hold GM Alexander Khalifman (2699) of Russia to a draw after 22 moves. Khalifman had won the FIDE World Chess Championship in 1999 and lost to Vishwanathan Anand in the quarter-finals at the last year's championship in Delhi. The second games will be played on Wednesday followed by the tie-breaks, if required. In rounds 1 to 5, each match will be played over two games and the winner of a match will be the first player to score 1.5 or more points. Many of the top seeds were hard-pressed to win their opening games. Two early successes, however, were Alexi Shirov, who beat Aimen Rizouk of Algeria and Peter Svidler of Russia, who accounted for Alejandro Hoffman of Argentina. Nisha Mohota scored a fine win over Woman Grandmaster Tatiana Stepovaia-Diachenko of Russia in the first game. Nisha needs only a draw to advance to the second round. Nisha, playing with white, moved into a good advantage early in the middlegame stage after the game started out from a Dutch defense. Nisha profited from an ill-advised queen exchange that her opponent went in for. That was on the 40th move and from there it was Nisha's game. Playing good positional chess nisha got her win duly after 55 moves. Nisha said, ''I think I got a good position after the opening and she just could not hold the pressure in the middlegame.'' Former World under-18 girls champion, Aarthie Ramaswamy defeated Georgian Nino Khurtsidze in another first round game. India's best woman hope at these championships, WGM Subbaraman Vijayalakshmi lost to Polish player Joanna Dworakowska. Viji actually got into a good position in the Dutch defense with white pieces, then succumbed to a good tactical plan from Dworakowska. In the middle game, Viji erred and lost a pawn and with it slowly the game slipped away. Pallavi Shah, who came through to the World championships with a win the zonals in Colombo, went down to WGM Antoaneta Stefanova of Bulgaria in a Sicilian Rossolimo game. Pallavi had black pieces. Pallavi was outplayed right from the opening as Stefanova rolled her king side pawns to full effect.
The moves:
Round 1, Game 1
Round 1, Game 1
Round 1, Game 1
Round 1, Game 1
Round 1, Game 1
Round 1, Game 1
Round 1, Game 1
Round 1, Game 1
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