Monte Carlo: Viswanathan Anand had an eventful 1-1 draw with Russian Alexander Morozevich, winning the rapid and losing the blindfold, to slip to joint third spot with 3.5 points after the third round of the 12th Amber Blindfold and Rapid Chess tournament here.

Linares champion Peter Leko of Hungary maintained his top position in the overall standings despite settling for two draws with compatriot Zoltan Almasi. Leko now has 4.5 points in his kitty from six games and is followed by Braingames champion Vladimir Kramnik of Russia on 4 points.

Anand shares the third spot in an overall standings with Boris Gelfand of Israel, Evgeny Bareev of Russia and Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine.

In the rapid standings, Anand shares the second spot with Leko and Morozevich. But his form is much less than desired in the blindfold where he is placed seventh.

The Indian stalwart faced an early surprise from the defending champion in the blindfold game. Morozevich had started off with two losses in this section but he bounced back in startling fashion.

Anand played the Caro Kann defence with black pieces and faced a rather harmless opening. The fireworks started in the middle game when Morozevich sacrificed a pawn to open the lines on the queen side.

Thereafter, even the trade of queens could not help Anand to maintain the positional balance.

Despite a pawn down, white had a firm grip on the position and Morozevich finished in style with a piece sacrifice to march his pawns to glory. Anand resigned on the 35th move.

In Rapid chess, Anand struck back with vengeance to level the scores. The opening was a Petroff defence and Anand uncorked a finely crafted tactical stroke on the 14th move to win a rook for a knight.

Showing excellent technique, Anand gave back the extra material at the right moment to emerge a pawn plus and romped home in 69 moves.

Leko found Almasi a tough nut to crack in both forms of the game. Their first duel in blindfold lasted till the 70th move with Leko struggling in the middle game. The rapid game between the two ended in peace in 38 moves.

Kramnik maintained his all win record in the blindfold games when he took advantage of a terrible blunder by his nemesis Alexei Shirov who played black.

The game had just entered an exciting stage when Shirov forgot about his queen on the edge of the board and found it trapped on the 19th turn. In the rapid game, however, the Spaniard drew after fighting it out till the very end.

PTI