Viswanathan Anand jumps to joint lead

Five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand played a brilliant defensive game to get the better of world number two Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France in the second round of the Sinquefield Cup, a part of the Grand Chess Tour, here on Sunday.

Facing a lot of pressure in the early part of the middle game and till much later, Anand put up stiff resistance and his counter-strike was simply brilliant as Vachier-Lagrave suffered his first loss in Classical chess this year.

Armenia Levon Aronian added to the woes of Peter Svidler of Russia who succumbed to his second straight loss while Hikaru Nakamura of United States bounced back from a first round loss to beat Dutch Grandmaster Anish Giri.

The other two games of the ten-player round-robin tournament ended in draws with Fabiano Caruana of United States surviving some anxious moments against Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria and Chinese Ding Liren getting a draw against the third American Wesley So.

Seven rounds still to come in the $300000 (around `20 million) prize money tournament.