Opening blues: Anand held by Pons,in third spot

The six-player double round-robin event got off with Armenian Levon Aronian crushing Sergey Karjakin of Russia and Italian Fabiano Caruana doing an early damage to the aspirations of world No.1 Magnus Carlsen of Norway.

Aronian and Caruana shot in to early lead following victories on three points. Anand shares the third spot on one point and giving him company is Vallejo,while Karjakin and Carlsen are yet to open their account.

Anand went for a principled variation in the Ragozine defense by Vallejo and a complicated position arose on the board in the middle game that ensued. Vallejo did not let the position slip out of hands at any point and kept himself in contention by making counters after castling on the king side.

As the game progressed,Anand was not able to make much impact even though the balance was slightly tilted in his favour and once the complexities subsided,the Spaniard came up with a thematic queen sacrifice to reach a theoretically drawn position. The game lasted 59 moves.