Viswanathan Anand began with a reasonable show on his maiden appearance in the Chess 960 world championship as the Indian managed to draw all three games on the opening day of Mainz Chess Classics here.
Anand, who has never played before in the Chess960 variant in which position of the pieces is randomly changed at the start of the game, survived a few anxious moments before drawing with Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan in the first game of the day.

Thereafter, Anand faced Etienne Bacrot of France for a similar result and finally salvaged a difficult position against defending champion Levon Aronian of Armenia.

After the end of the third round, Aronian emerged as the sole leader on 2.5 points after blanking both Kasimdzhanov and Bacrot.

Kasimdzhanov defeated Bacrot to keep himself on 1.5 points along with Anand while Bacrot is now firmly in the cellar on just a half point. The return games of the prelims are still left and top two players from here will play a match amongst themselves to decide the winner.

Hari is joint winner
At Paks in Hungary, defending champion Grandmaster P Harikrishna had to settle for shared first place with Hungarian Peter Acs after playing out an easy draw with home challenger GM Csaba Balogh in the final round of the 5th Marx Gyrogy memorial international chess tournament, adds PTI.

Harikrishna had little to do with black as Balogh was quite content going for level territories in the Ruy Lopez opening as white. Harikrishna yet again followed a recent game played by Jakovenko of Russia and equalised in quick time. All the minor pieces changed hands in the middlegame and there was little to play for thereafter.
Harikrishna ended his stint with six points out of a possible 10, a recovery after a disastrous start.

Balogh finished sole third on 5.5 points.

Final standings: P Harikrishna (Ind, 6) and P Acs (Hun, 6) 1; Csaba Balogh (Hun, 5.5) 3; Ferenc Berkes (Hun, 5) 4; Viktor Korchnoi (Sui, 4.5) 5; Yifan Hou (Chn, 3).