Altibox chess tournament: Anand to meet Nakamura

Former world champion Viswanathan Anand will take on Hikaru Nakamura of the United States in the seventh round of Altibox Norway Chess tournament here. After a rather slow start that cost him two losses in the first five rounds, Anand rose back in style defeating Fabiano Caruana of United States in the previous round.

Nakamura and Levon Aronian of Armenia are leading the tournament on four points each, a full point clear of Russian duo of Vladimir Kramnik and Sergey Karjakin, Anish Giri of Holland and Wesley So of United States.

Anand shares the seventh spot in the 10-player round-robin tournament along side world champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave of France and Caruana who all have 2.5 points apiece. In the last three remaining games, Anand gets two white and one black which might just help the Indian ace to turn the tide in his favour. After the white game against Nakamura, Anand will play as black against Aronian and in the final round he will again have white against Carlsen. The world champion has been clearly struggling on his home turf and time might already be running out for him. Magnus Carlsen is still looking for his first victory in the tournament and is yet to show an impressive display here. Aronian, with scalp of two former world champions, has done quite well. Inflicting a loss to Carlsen, the Armenian followed it up with a victory against Kramnik in the previous round and he seems to be the man in form. Much would depend on how things shape up in his game against Anand.