Anand will hope his lightning speed would help him achieve both goals as the Amber Chess championship gets under way after the rest day here late tonight.The Indian was leading the rapid section and was joint fourth overall after the eighth round. He still has a chance of making the tournament noteworthy with some good performances in the next three rounds.

Anand has had a superb run in rapid play section in which he leads with six points from eight games. But the World No 2 surprisingly came up with poor results in the blindfold section, in which he is considered the best in the world. He has been unable to win a single game, managing only three points.But faced with players like Jeroen Piket, Anatoly Karpov and Vassily Ivanchuk, who, like him, did nothave a good tournament thus far, Anand has an excellent chance of winning the rapid play section, in which his nearest rival Vladimir Kramnik is a full point behind.

And with a more concentrated effort, the Indian can edge closer to Russia's Vladimir Kramnik, who leads the overall standings with 11.5 points. Anand, with nine points, shares the fourth position with J Lautier of France.Meanwhile, the race for the top prize in the tournament has also hotted up with Kramnik facing a strong challenge from Alexei Shirov, who shared the title with him last year. Russian-born Spaniard Shirov was placed third with 10 points and was clubbed together with Vaselin Topalov of Bulgaria.In the last three rounds, Kramnik is up against Predrag Nikolic (Bih), Boris Gelfand (Blr) and Joel Lautier while Shirov faces former Fide World Champion Anatoly Karpov, Vaseily Ivanchuk and Jeroen Piket.