Five-time world champion Viswanathan Anand scored his first win in the Tata Steel Masters chess tournament, blasting the strong defense of Jeffrey Xiong of the US. With this win, Anand reached a joint sixth place with 2.5 points.
Changing the venue of the tournament proved to be lucky for the Indian grandmaster Anand as he had lost in one of the four games played at Wijk Aan Ji earlier while drawing the other three. However, this time the Indian showed his great game He attacked like a king with his white pieces and was in a better position in the middlegame. Xiong also left no stone unturned in the defense but Anand finally managed to win by defeating his tricks. With this win, Anand has reached a joint sixth place with 2.5 points.
Further in this round Iranian Firoza Alireza defeated Anees Giri of the Netherlands. With this win, the Iranian player managed to take the joint lead with Filipino-American chess grandmaster Wesley So. Both the Iranian and American chess grandmasters have a total of 3.5 points. Both these chess grandmasters are followed by Russia’s Vladislav Amritaev, America’s Fabiano Caruana and Netherlands’ Lucas van Foreest who are just half a point behind them. 
Indian grandmaster Anand ranks joint sixth in the table along with Norwegian world champion Magnus Karlsson, Poland’s Jan-Krzysztof Duda Russia’s Dubov Danil and Xiong. Anees Giri has slipped to 11th position. Anees shares the 11 position along with Russia’s Nikita Vitigov who also has two points. China’s Yu Yangyi has 1.5 points and is in 13th place. In this tournament of a total of 14 participants, Kovalev is ranked 14th with only one point to his name.
In the Challengers category, Suryashekhar Ganguly played a draw with David Anton, and he is on a combined lead with 3.5 points. However, Nihal Sarin of India suffered a defeat at the hands of the Netherlands’ Lucas van Foreest.
