World champion Viswanathan Anand started his campaign in Wijk aan Zee quietly with two draws against Sergey Karjakin of Ukraine with the black pieces and against Nigel Short with the white pieces.
Anand's 2000 World Championship finalist, 1972-born Alexei Shirov is leading with two full points. Hikaru Nakamura and Magnus Carlsen are in the second-third places with 1.5 points.
Anand is in a large group of players (incl Kramnik, Ivanchuk etc) tied with one point from two games. It is a 14-player all-play-all and runs until Jan 31, 2010.
Grand Master Group B
Third seed P. Harikrishna drew with Emil Sutovsky in the second round and recovered from the opening round defeat he suffered from Anish Giri of the Netherlands. Harikrishna is on 0.5/2 along with V. Akobian who also played at Bursa in Turkey. Anish Giri leads with 2/2. Negi is on one point after making draws with Howell and Anna Muzuchuk.
Grand Master Group C
In this group, Soumya Swaminathan recovered from round one defeat with a draw draw against Swinkels in round two. She is on 0.5/2. Adhijeet Gupta is on one point after two draws. Robson who beat Soumya in the first round leads with 2/2.
The Corus Chess Tournament is one of the longest running chess events in the world after the Hastings Tournament.
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