London: World Champion Viswanathan Anand defeated former World Championship Challenger Nigel Short in the fifth round of the London Chess Classic 2011 at the Olympia Media centre at Kensington.

Anand had been bogged down by draws at the Tal Memorial at Moscow last month, though he remained undefeated and here he drew the first two games and lost the third game to Hikaru Nakamura.

Meanwhile there was plenty of excitement on the remaining boards also with Nakamura defeating David Howell to shoot into sole lead with 10 points. Magnus Carlsen once again wriggled out of a disadvantageous position to draw against Levon Aronian of Armenia while Vladimir Kramnik defeated Michael Adams. Luke McShane had a bye and assisted the commentary team.

Carlsen is trailing one point behind the leader while Kramnik and McShane follow behind with 8 points each. Anand and Aronian are next with 5 points each, Short has amassed 3 points and Adams and Howell bring about the rear with 2 points each. Anand, Aronian and Kramnik however have played one game less than Carlsen and Nakamura.

Anand adopted the sharp Sicilian defence against Short and it was an offbeat line which Anand later admitted that he had not looked into before, though his second Peter Nielsen had sent some notes on that particular variation.

For most part the game was evenly balanced and once again a draw loomed large after the exchange of pieces. The players were left with a queen, rook, knight and four pawns each and needed precise calculations and technique to draw the game.

Short however appeared to lose thread and an inaccurate 36th knight move virtually shut out the game for him. Later at the press conference, Short commented “ A move of criminal stupidity”.

Anand then wrapped up the game after 62 moves.

On the rest day on Wednesday, Anand along with GM John Nunn and astronomer Dr Christian Sasse delivered a lecture on astronomy and enthralled the audience with their talk and slide show on how they captured images of distant galaxies using remote telescopes.