Anand beats Vachier-Lagrave, takes second position

After his second win in a row, American Wesley So (formerly from the Philippines), who went past 2800Elo in live rating. He is the 12th player in the history of chess to do so. Fprmer World champion Viswanathan Anand occupited the second position with 1.5 points after his clinical win over Maxime Vachier –Lagrave in the second round. 

With his win over Veselin Topalov, Fabiano Caruana is now only 14 rating points behind Magnus Carlsen on the live rating list. If the US champion can repeat his phenomenal performance in the 2014 Sinquefield Cup where he went 7-0, he will become the highest rated player in the world! Vladimir Kramnik and Levon Aronian joined Anand for the second-place tie after their peaceful result. Anish Giri is the only player with two draws, after he wasn’t able to pose any serious problems for Hikaru Nakamura. This was an extremely dynamic theoretical battle where Anand challenged the Frenchman’s Najdorf with his deep preparation. Finding himself out of book early on, Vachier-Lagrave chose not to sacrifice an exchange for a pawn and centralization, instead sacrificing a pawn for quick development and a double-edged position. Unfortunately for him, this allowed white to maintain his extra pawn and the advantage. Anand made some inaccuracies, eventually sacrificing an exchange for two pawns in the endgame. The final mistake came toward the very end, when Vachier-Lagrave didn’t eliminate his opponent’s bishop pair and blundered a bishop sacrifice that allowed a passed pawn.