World Rapid chess champion Viswanathan Anand warmed up to the Altibox Norway Chess tournament with a joint second place finish in the blitz event in Stavanger, Norway, which was also used to determine the cross table for the classic tournament.
Anand finished with a total of 5.5 points from a possible nine along with USA’s Hikaru Nakamura while his compatriot Wesley So took the title with a score of 6 points.
The Indian Grandmaster, who goes into the 10-player world’s strongest classic chess event of the year as the lowest ranking competitor, won three and drew five of his blitz games and lost just one against Fabiano Caruana of USA.
World champion Magnus Carlsen, playing in front of his home crowd, finished fourth.
According to the rules of the tournament, the top five finishers in the blitz game will get an additional white game in the 10-player round-robin event. The other interesting part of the tournament is that no draw offers are allowed.