Wijk Aan Zee (The Netherlands): Viswanathan Anand settled old scores beating world champion Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine to remain in joint lead after the seventh round of the 65th Corus Chess tournament.

Anand, who lost his world champion crown to Ponomariov last year, registered the victory in 34 moves.

Dutch champion Grand Master Loek Van Wely defeated Jan Timman and continued to lead the table along with Anand on five points.

However, the other overnight leader and world's highest rated woman, Judit Polgar drew a tense game with top seed Braingames champion Vladimir Kramnik and slipped to joint third spot on 4.5 points. Joining her on the third spot was Spaniard Alexei Shirov who humbled Evgeny Bareev of Russia.

In the Grand Master 'B' tournament, former world junior girls champion Koneru Humpy finally tasted success cruising past local hope GM Harmen Jonkman. Top seed GM Zhang Zhong recorded his sixth win on the trot crushing GM Arkadij Naiditsch of Germany. The Chinese leads with a huge gap of 1.5 points, having 6.5 points in his kitty.

The Labourdonnais variation of the Sicilian has found few takers in elite chess circles for past many years but Anand has not quite been an active advocate of the system. And he demonstrated precisely why with his white pieces on Sunday.

Ponomariov continued with dangerous play and accepted a pawn sacrifice by Anand as early as on the 10th move. An alert Anand quickly developed his initiative and just five moves later the Ukrainian was fighting a lost battle.

Winning an exchange on the 17th move, Anand utilised all his pieces to perfection and penetrated the base rank with his rooks after the trade of queens.

Ponomariov lost another piece and fought on for a few moves in the hope of a miracle that did not happen. It took Anand just 34 moves to force resignation.

Loek Van Wely's in-depth preparation was again to the fore as he crushed his more famous rival easily. Playing black, Timman employed the Finachetto variation in the Slav defence and felt the heat right from the beginning.

Van Wely first got a space advantage with thematic manoeuvres and just while he threatened to roll his kingside pawns, Timman fumbled and found his king trapped in the middle of the board. The game lasted 24 moves.

Alexei Shirov gave an excellent display of attacking chess against Bareev, whose chances of defending the title have almost evaporated. Opting to take the poisoned pawn in French defence, Bareev went for unwarranted complications and was soon pushed to the wall by Shirov.

A temporary piece sacrifice on the 29th move by Shirov sealed Bareev's fate completely and he called it a day on the 28th move. The Spaniard won the public prize for best game of the day.

PTI