India's Grandmaster Vishwanathan Anand suffered a loss in the eighth round of the Tata Steel Masters chess tournament on Monday despite reaching close to victory over Fabiano Caruana of the US. World Champion Magnus Carlson defeated Russia's Nikita Vituigov to win the tournament. It was a one-way win for them. It was a bad day for Anand as he could not do the right move despite Karuana making a mistake in the 37th move and he had to face defeat in the end.
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Alireza Firouza and Caruana have made a joint lead with 5.5 points. Both are ahead of Wesley Soe in the US and Jordan Van Forrest of the Netherlands. Karlsson has 4.5 points and is behind them both along with Poland's John Christoph Duda. Anand has slipped to the tenth position with 3.5 points from his second defeat in the tournament. Ukraine's Grandmaster Pavel Elizanov holds a solo lead in the Challengers category. He drew with Nodirbek Abdusattarov of Uzbekistan.
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We are also being told that among the Indians, Suryashekhar Ganguly drew from Irwin Lamy of the Netherlands but Nihal Sarin lost to Spain's David Anton Gujaro. Despite this, Ganguly is jointly in second place and is half a point behind Alijanova.
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