Viswanathan Anand's amazing run continued unabated as he completed his third successive 2-0 sweep in the 14th Amber Blindfold and Rapid Chess Tournament at the Monte Carlo Grand Hotel in Monaco.
The Indian ace, sponsored by NIIT, beat Francisco Vallejo Pons in both blindfold and rapid games and took his tally to three each in both sections.
His total of six points is now two clear of his nearest rival.
In both the blindfold and rapid against Vallejo Pons, it seemed the games were somewhat drawish. But Anand suddenly conjured up a win in both.
In blindfold, which was a Sicilian Najdorf and Anand had white, Vallejo Pons erred on his 21st move and Anand pounced on it. He completed the win in 32 moves.
Then in rapid once again, Vallejo Pons, this time with white, was on his way to a draw, but once again the Spaniard made mistakes and Anand capitalized on them and won his sixth game in a row.
The game was an English Symmetrical and ended in 60 moves.
As Anand won his third straight blindfold game, so did Vladimir Kramnik. He beat Veselin Topalov in a Sicilian. But Kramnik has just one point from his rapid games, dropping his combined total to four out of six.
Alexei Shirov is having a poor tournament having lost all his blindfold games and drawn only one rapid. Today he was beaten by Vassily Ivanchuk.
In round two, Anand had wiped out Veselin Topalov 2-0 and in the first round, he beat Alexei Shirov by the same margin.
The total prize fund is Euros 193,250 and each day, the Grandmasters play one rapid game and one blindfold game of about one hour each.
Blindfold results: Round 3: Morozevich drew with Svidler; Bareev lost to Leko; Gelfand beat Van Wely; Anand beat Vallejo Pons; Kramnik beat Topalov; Shirov lost to Ivanchuk.
Round 3 Blindfold Standings: 1. Kramnik and Anand 3.0 each; 3. Svidler 2.5; 4. Leko and Ivanchuk 2.0; 6. Morozevich and Gelfand 1.5; 8. Bareev and Vallejo Pons 1.0; 10. Van Wely 0.5; 11. Shirov and Topalov 0.
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