With a half point lead to back him from his Morelia stint in Mexico, World Champion Viswanathan Anand starts favourite in the second half of the Morelia-Linares tournament that starts in this Spanish hamlet.

The Indian ace currently has 4.5 points from his first seven games in the category-21 event and a similar result in Linares should definitely be enough to retain the title.

In Morelia, Anand was devastating with black pieces as he won three out of four black games and in Linares he will have four whites which will make the task of his contemporaries much difficult.

Former world champion Veslein Topalov of Bulgaria and Alexei Shirov of Spain follow Anand a half point behind. Another half point adrift are Norwegian Magnus Carlsen and Armenian Levon Aronian with 3.5 points each while Temour Radjabov of Azerbaijan and Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine are now joint fifth on 3 points apiece.

With just 2.5 points in his kitty, Peter Leko of Hungary is currently at the bottom of the tables and would certainly like to better his present status.

Topalov and Shirov have in them to live up things and give Anand a run for his money in the second half of the tournament.

However, Anand’s huge plus score against Shirov might be a deterrent in the aspirations of the Latvian born Spaniard and according to experts Topalov is possibly the only one who can pose a challenge to Anand in the event.

Carlsen was quite brilliant in Corus tournament that he jointly won with Aronian but here both these players are a full point behind Anand and will have a lot of catching up to do before they can actually make a run for the title.

In the 8th round, Anand will take on Shirov who earlier lost to the Indian stalwart in the first round playing white. Anand would like to maintain a clean slate against Shirov and if he does so, it will be a perfect beginning in the second half.