At the half way stage of the eight-players double round robin tournament, the Indian ace has 3.5 points.

Grischuik remained atop the tables on five points out of a possible seven and remained a full point clear of Norwegian prodigy Magnus Carlsen and Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine who scored a win over Levon Aronian of Armenia.

Anand shares the fourth spot with Aronian whose double defeat in last two rounds have severely dented his chances in the tournament.

The sixth spot is held by Lenier Dominguez of Cuba while Wang Yue of China and Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan share the seventh spot on 2.5 points each.

Grischuk held on to his own against Anand whose experiment with the queen pawn opening continued.

After coming out with a minor surprise on move three when he decided to avoid main lines of Grunfeld defense, Anand settled to play the Samisch attack against the King's Indian defense.