Anand Viswanathan blunders again, loses to Aronian in Grenke chess

BADEN-BADEN: Viswanathan Anand's woes in the Grenke Chess Classic continued as the five times world champion blundered yet again and went down to Levon Aornian of Armenia in the fifth round that concluded here.

After losing from an unclear position against world champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway in the previous round, Anand appeared in fine fettle against Aronian and stood better when he let the position slip out of hands and lost rather meekly.

Carlsen meanwhile defeated lowest ranked David Baramidze of Germany in his typical style to join Arkadij Naiditsch of Germany in lead on 3.5 points out of his five games. Naiditsch played out a draw with Fabiano Caruana of Italy in this round while the other game of the day between Michael Adams of England and Etienne Bacrot of France also ended in a draw.

With just two rounds to come in the eight-player round-robin tournament, Caruana holds the sole third position on three points while Aronian, Adams and Bacrot are joint fourth with 2.5 points apiece. Anand remained on 1.5 points following his second successive loss and is now on seventh spot, a half point ahead of Baramidze.

It was a day when lady luck kept Anand out of favour as he missed from a position of strength. The Indian ace, has been playing uncompromising chess for quite some time now and his choice of going for the Ragozin variation as black was another attestation to this. Aronian chose a line in which Carlsen beat him a few weeks back during the Tata Steel tournament in Wijk Aan Zee but Anand had worked on a very active plan that involved pushing his king side pawns.

Aronian was surprised as black kept piling up the pressure with slow but consistent play and the Armenian was looking quite passive by move-22 itself.

However, Anand played a blunder on the very next move itself and the position turned upside-down in just a couple of moves. Aronian pocked a pawn on move 28 and Anand called it a day six moves later.