Viswanathan Anand loses to Vladimir Kramnik

Five-time World champion Viswanathan Anand suffered an early jolt, losing to his former challenger Vladimir Kramnik of Russia in the second round of Altibox Norway chess tournament here.

It turned out to be a bad day for Anand, who earlier uncorked an interesting idea with his white pieces. However, the Indian missed the thread of the position at a crucial juncture and went down in the ensuing endgame.

Like in the first round, the second round too had just one decisive game and Kramnik emerged as the co-leader on 1.5 points alongside Hikaru Nakamura of United States, who drew with Levon Aronian of Armenia.

In other games of the day, World Champion Magnus Carlsen played out a second draw on the trot with Fabiano Caruana of United States, Anish Giri of Holland opened his account after signing peace with Sergey Karjakin of Russia and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France drew with Wesley So of United States.

With seven rounds still to go in the strongest tournament of the year, Vachier, Karjakin, Aronian, Wesley So, Caruana and Carlsen share the second spot on one point each having drawn both games while Anand and Giri share the ninth spot with half a point from two games.

Anand and Kramnik played for the first time in 1989 when six participants of this event were not even born. The rivalry between two most successful chess players of modern times continued yet again.