St Louis: India’s Viswanathan Anand had a forgettable outing in St. Louis Rapid and blitz as he finished last after scoring 13.5 points in all out of a possible 27 games that ended here.
Anand will now combat the world’s best including Magnus Carlsen of Norway in the Sinquefield cup slated to start after a day’s gap.
The Indian ace never got going after scoring a first round victory over Hikaru Nakamura of United States in the rapid section and this could be saving the blushes as Nakamura emerged as the clear winner of this leg. Anand ended the last day scoring four points out of a possible nine in the blitz section that left him with 7.5/18 and did not help much.
Nakamura won the event handsomely with a round to spare. The American scored 22.5 points in all and ended a full point clear of Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France who finished second. Just a half point behind was Shakhriyar Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan for his third place finish.
The Competition still remains but it is quite unlikely for Anand to finish in top four now in the overall Grand Chess tour standings that guarantee a playoff in London later this year. However, the Indian ace will really like to test his form ahead of the Chess Olympiad.
Finals Standings: Hikaru Nakamura (Usa, 22.5); 2. Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (Fra, 21.5); 3. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (Aze, 21); 4. Fabiano Caruana (Usa, 20); 5. Levon Aronian (Arm, 18); 6. Sergey Karjakin (Rus, 17); 7. Leinier Dominguez (Cub, 16); 8. Alexander Grischuk (Rus, 15.5); 9. Wesley So (Usa, 15); 10. V Anand (Ind, 13.5).
