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Anand draws, Hari Krishna wins opener

World champion Viswanathan Anand played out a quick draw with Hikaru Nakamura of United States while debutant P Harikrishna beat local player Anish Giri in the first round of the ‘A’ group of Tata Steel Chess tournament that got underway here.

Nakamura went for a surprise in the French defense as black, not giving much to the Indian ace and it was a fairly quick draw but Harikrishna fought on a drawn endgame for a long time and capitalized on some errors to score his first victory in his first game of the premier group.

It turned out to a generally quite start in the traditional event as, apart from Harikrishna, only Sergey Karjakin of Russia could force a victory against Chinese girl Yifan Hou.

World number one Magnus Carlsen also played out a draw with Fabiano Caruana of Italy in a rather sedate start while world number three Levon Aronian could not break the ice against local star Loek Van Wely.

Ivan Sokolov of Holland pushed for a victory in his game against Wang Hao of China but never came close while Hungarian Peter Leko faltered from a much better position against Dutchman Erwin L’Ami to finally split the point. Harikrishna and Karjakin emerged as early leaders in this 14-player 13-round tournament being played on round robin.
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