Anand in Corsica Masters final

World champion Vishwanathan Anand stormed into the final of the Corsica Masters Rapid chess tournament with a resounding 1.5-0.5 victory over Russian-born Dutchman Grandmaster Sergei Tiviakov in the first semi-final in Bastia, France, on Wednesday.

Anand will meet GM Alexander Chernin of Hungary in the final and is a big favourite to win the title.

Chernin accounted for rising local star Grandmaster Joel Lautier with an identical 1.5-0.5 margin in the other semi-final.

In the first game, Anand made mincemeat of Tiviakov's Sicilian defence with the white pieces. The game, that took shape in one of the off-beat dragon variations, gave Anand a spatial advantage early in the opening and the Indian ace capitalised on a late middlegame error of his opponent to squeeze out the defensive resources.

It was a devastating Knight check on the 28th move that destroyed Tiviakov's position as he was forced to part with his queen for two pieces a couple of moves later. However, the pieces failed to give Tiviakov the desired compensation and Anand wrapped up the game in 41 moves.

The second game too was tense, and this time Tiviakov took his chances with white pieces. The Caro Kann defence has remained faithful to Anand for a long time now and he came up with a relatively new idea conceding the Bishop pair advantage early in the opening.

However, the nature of the position remained closed thereon and Tivakov's attempt to open up were dealt with in masterly fashion.

The queens got traded on the 26th move and the endgame then was easy to deal. After fighting it out till the 54th move, Tiviakov resigned.

Earlier, in the quarter-finals, Anand cruised past his long time rival GM Peter Leko of Hungary after drawing the first three games.

After a couple of nailbiting draws with each colour in the normal time control, Anand got the advantage of black pieces in the third game and needed only another draw to get through to the next stage.

Starting with the Sicilian defence, Anand employed the accelerated Dragon variation and did not look in much difficulty as pieces were disposed of in the middlegame.