Anand avoids last-place finish in Bilbao

Magnus Carlsen of Norway won the Bilbao Grand Slam chess tournament with a last-round draw against Hikaru Nakamura of US on Tuesday.

Carlsen's closest rival for title, Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine, also drew his game against Levon Aronian of Armenia leading to a tie for first place with 15 points each in the Bilbao (football scoring) system but both the tiebreaks (SB and traditional scoring) favoured the Norwegian.

If Carlsen and Ivanchuk fought for the first place, on the adjacent table, world champion Viswanathan Anand was engaged in a do-or-die battle for avoiding the last place with Vallejo Pons of Spain. It was interesting to watch Anand try everything in his bag to outplay Vallejo, who started the round with a one-point advantage over the Indian.

Hari Hara Nandanan for The Times of India