Viswanathan Anand drew both his games against Russian Grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik but retained his top ranking to be joint overall leader after the sixth round in the 12th Amber Blindfold and Rapid chess tournament in Monte Carlo.
Anand and Hungarian Peter Leko share the overall lead with eight points each from their 12 games, with the Indian ace also being the joint leader in the Rapid category alongwith Russian Evegeny Bareev, with 4.5 points each from six games.
The Indian Grandmaster, playing with black pieces, put up strong defences to upstage the top seeded Kramnik, who prior to this game had conceded just one draw in the Blindfold category.
In response to Anand's Sicilian Nazdorf opening, Kramnik went for in-vogue English attack and met with a surprise rook lift by the Indian in the middle game that made the position level and a draw was agreed upon after just 26 moves. In the Rapid variety, Anand, playing white, faced an early surprise in one of the closed Sicilian variations and Kramnik was seen pressing for some advantage after the trade of queens on the 14th move.
However, running short of time Kramnik decided not to take any big risk and the game was drawn on the 40th move.
In another interesting encounter, Leko defeated Ukrainian Vassily Ivanchuk in the Rapid game to win 1.5-0.5 after drawing the Blindfold, while Morozevich was surprised by Shirov who struck form with a 2-0 whitewash of the defending champion.
In the overall standings, Kramnik and Israeli GM Boris Gelfand are just half a point behind leaders Anand and Leko, while a pack of three -- Bulgarian Veselin Topalov, defending champion Alexander Morozevich of Russia and Bareev -- rank third with 6.5 points each to their credit.
Kramnik leads the blindfold section with five points from six games and continues to struggle in the Rapid category with just 2.5 points.
Half a point behind Kramnik is Boris Gelfand and Anand and Topalov with 3.5 points each are joint fourth, behind Leko who has four points in his kitty.
Results Round six:
Blindfold: Vladimir Kramnik (Rus) drew Viswanathan Anand; Peter Leko (Hun) drew Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukr); Evgeny Bareev (Rus) beat Ljubomir Ljubojevic (Yug), Zoltan Almasi (Hun) lost to Boris Gelfand (Isr); Veselin Topalov (Bul) beat Loek van Wely (Ned); Alexei Shirov (Esp) beat Alexander Morozevich (Rus).
Rapid: Anand drew Kramnik; Ivanchuk lost to Leko; Ljubojevic lost to Bareev; Gelfand beat Almasi; Van Wely drew Topalov; Morozevich lost to Shirov.
Standings (Blindfold): 1. Kramnik 5; 2. Gelfand 4.5; 3. Leko 4; 4-5. Anand, Topalov 3.5 each; 6-7. Ivanchuk, Van Wely 3.0 each; 8-9. Almasi, Morozevich 2.5 each; 10-11. Shirov, Bareev 2 each; 12. Ljubojevic 0.5.
Standings (Rapid): 1-2. Anand, Bareev 4.5; 3-4. Leko, Morozevich 4 each; 5-6. Topalov, Gelfand 3 each; 7-10. Kramnik, Shirov, Almasi, Ivanchuk 2.5 each; 11. Van Wely 2.0; 12. Ljubojevic 1.0.
Overall standings: 1-2. Leko, Anand 8.0 each; 3-4. Kramnik, Gelfand 7.5 each; 5-7. Topalov, Morozevich, Bareev 6.5 each; 8. Ivanchuk 5.5; 9-10. Almasi, Van Wely 5.0 each; 11. Shirov 4.5; 12. Ljubojevic 1.5.