Viswanathan Anand faces stiff challenge in Candidates Chess Tournament 2016

Viswanathan Anand faces stiff challenge in Candidates Chess Tournament 2016.

World no. 12 and the tournaments favourite Viswanathan Anand looked comfortable till round 11 of the FIDE Candidates Chess Tournament 2016, when he comfortably defeated Sergei Karjakin of Russia.

But things started to turn upside down when he lost to American Chess Grand Master Hikaru Nakamura in the round 12 of the competition, which tilted his top position to being pulled down to the second position in the tournament. Anand, determined to make it as a challenger to Magnus Carlsen in the upcoming World Chess Championship 2016 must win the Candidates tournament in order to qualify as a challenger. Anand has already lost to Carlsen twice in the process of becoming the World Chess Champion.

Since Karjakin had already defeated Anand in the earlier round he had had a difficult task of beating the former, but Anand with his doubled rook move in the game changed the course completely and took advantage over Karjakin's mistakes and registered a much needed win. However he had a disastrous match against Hikaru Nakamura, who stands in seventh position and has already lost his hopes of winning the tournament took Anand on a ride and finished the game within just 24 moves of the match. It is to be noted that Anand was caught off guard in his English opening by Nakamura which gave him a slight advantage over him. But the final blow came when Anand decided to trade Knights, which seemed decisive for Nakamura and sealed the match comfortable. It is to be noted that Anand had almost used the same line of game strategy against Fabio Caruana, against whom he had lost.

However, Anand seems confident that he will perform well in the upcoming two rounds and again bounce back to the top position. With a need of two on two wins, Anand will be facing Anish Giri in the thirteenth round of the tournament and will be playing with white pawns and on the final rounds he will have to play strongly with black pawns and let's not forget his most remembered win against Topolov in 2010 Sofia World Chess Championship playing with black pawns and holding on to his title.