Indian men held by Cuba

World number two Viswanathan Anand settled for a draw for the sixth consecutive time as Indian men continued to move at a slow pace and were held 2-2 by Cuba in the 10th round of the 37th Chess Olympiad.

Anand, who was playing his seventh game out of ten here so far, did not get any chances against Bruzon Lazaro of Cuba and ended on equal footing in the keenly contested game.

The Indian ace had won his first encounter here against a lowly placed Mongolian and since then he has not been able to find his touch -- something his second seed team needs badly as they are theoretically still in contention for a medal even though the optimism is fading away fast.

Anand's draw in fact turned out to be infectious as none of the other higher rated Indians could break the ice against solid Cuban counterparts. On the remaining boards, Krishnan Sasikiran, P Harikrishna and Surya Shekhar Ganguly also signed peace to leave the team precariously placed on 24.5 points with just three rounds or 12 games remaining.

Meanwhile the Armenians continued to roll and scored a fine 1 2.5-1.5 win over China with second board Vladimir Akopian scoring a memorable victory over Zhang Zhong in an incredible game.

The Armenians took their tally to 29 points after the victory and took a huge two points lead over China that maintained its sole second position despite the loss. Top seed Russians and Czech Republic are placed joint third on 26.5 points while France is closely following them on 26 points with USA on their toes.

Category: Chess , The Chess Olympiad