Former World champion Viswanathan Anand had another bad outing, drawing seven and losing two games, to remain on joint eighth place after the end of nine rounds of blitz in the St. Louis Rapid and blitz chess tournament in St. Louis, United States.
Having garnered just seven points out of a possible 18 in the rapid section, Anand needed a big breakthrough in the blitz tournament spanning over 18-rounds but he was not in his best shape to make a mark.
Losing a clear better position against tournament leader Levon Aronian of Armenia and a forced drawn position to Sergey Karjakin of Russia, Anand drew the remaining seven to reach just 10.5 points and now the podium is out of his reach.
Aronian, meanwhile, continued with his good run and scored 6.5 out of nine in the blitz games to lead the tables by a two-point margin over Hikaru Nakamura of United States who is on 16.5 points.
The blitz belonged to Karjakin who scored a massive eight out of nine points winning seven and drawing just two games in the day. Lucky on some occasions, Karjakin jumped to sole third spot on 16
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