World champion Viswanathan Anand suffered a rare loss, going down to Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine in the third round of the fourth Bilbao Final Masters here.
After two fighting draws, Anand did not achieve much in the opening with white, and once his position worsened Ivanchuk played in machine-like fashion to force a victory.
Carlsen loses
It was in fact a day of the underdogs in the Final Masters as World No. 1 Magnus Carlsen of Norway also suffered a shock defeat at the hands of low-ranked Francisco Vallejo Pons of Spain.
The other game of the category-22 event between Levon Aronian of Armenia and Hikaru Nakamura of United States ended in a draw.
After his second successive victory, Ivanchuk shot into sole lead with seven points. Overnight joint leader Aronian, meanwhile, slipped to the second spot with five points, and now has a two-point lead over nearest rivals Nakamura and Vallejo Pons.
Carlsen and Anand are currently languishing at the bottom of the table with just two points that came from two draws in the first two rounds.
The 42-year-old Ivanchuk came to Sao Paulo after a gruelling World Cup that lasted three weeks.
Ivanchuk had finished third in the World Cup, which gave him a berth in the next World Championship cycle.
It was not Anand's day as the Ukrainian went for the Jaenisch variation in the Ruy Lopez that is recently gaining momentum, thanks to the exploits of Azeri Teimour Radjabov.
Carlsen was quite unlucky as he let go a winning position against Vallejo.
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