BIEL (SWITZERLAND), July 26: Top seed Vishwanathan Anand and Fide world champion Anatoly Karpov played a safe draw to maintain their lead with three points in the fourth round of the Credit Suisse Grandmasters Tournament, here yesterday.

The Indian Grandmaster, with black pieces, avoided the Queens Gambit accepted variation with which he had drawn with Karpov in their last two encounters and chose the Semi-Slav defence.

Karpov failed to get any advantage from the opening and soon a string of exchanges followed, leading to an ending where both players were left with equal pawns. The game was agreed drawn after 41 moves.

As the tournament is a double round-robin, Anand will play Karpov with white pieces in the second cycle, which gives him the edge over the Russian.

Boris Gelfand recovered from his loss to Anand in the previous round, defeating the young Swiss IM Yannick Pelletier with black pieces in a Nimzo Indian Defence.

centre to launch an attack on black's King and concluded the game with a neat combination, winning the queen.

Standings after 4 rounds: 1-2 V Anand (Ind) and A Karpov (Rus) 3 points; 3 B Gelfand (Belarus) 2.5 points; 4-5 J Lautier and V Milov (Swz) 1.5 points; 6 Y Pelletier (Swz) 0.5 points.

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