Chess whiz Anand joins 2800 club

New Delhi: Grandmaster Viswanathan Anand achieved his long cherished dream of figuring in ELO 2800 club as the chess' world governing body FIDE announced its latest rating list.

Anand, who was knocking on the 2800 door for quite sometime, finally saw it happening at the Corus Super Grandmasters tournament which he won for a record fifth time in January.

The Indian ace began the event with ELO 2792 points and gained 11 points to breach the landmark but missed the top rank by just one point.

The top spot was vacant after removal of world's top rated and now-retired Garry Kasparov's name from the active players' list.

Kasparov, who had announced his retirement from professional chess at the Linares tournament last year while on top of the world rankings but since his inactive period surpassed a year now, the name of Russian wizard was removed from the rating list.

The top place was grabbed by World Champion Veselin Topalov, who withstood some real hard time in this year's Linares tournament, which Anand missed and remained at ELO 2803 points.

After a real tough start, Topalov clawed back in the tournament with some late onslaught that not only kept him in the 2800 club but pushed him to the top spot with 2804 points in the quarterly list.

GM Krishnan Sasikiran was a notable gainer in the list with the Indian, on 2692, clinching back his number two position following his fine performances in the Aeroflot International Open at Moscow, where he was a joint winner.

P Harikrishna on 2680 was the third best Indian.

Among the women players, Hungarian Judit Polgar's supremacy remained uncontested as ever on 2711 ELO points.

But the honour of being the top girl remained with Koneru Humpy, who moved to 2548 in the new list, since Polgar never plays in the women's events.

Humpy also remained the top junior girl of the world while former world junior champion GM P Harikrishna was the number two among the boys.

Double Grandmaster-norm holder Parimarjan Negi figured in the top-20 of the country for the first time after earning 49 points in the last quarter.

In fact, the 13-year-old has already crossed the ELO 2500 barrier but that would be accounted in the July list.