As he so often does, Vishy Anand is making it look easy. There is a tight horserace in this rapid tournament, but there is a tiger loose among the horses. Anand leads by two full points with two rounds to play while only a point and a half separates the other five players.

While ruining the suspense of the event (was there really any suspense?), Anand has played crushing chess. He has won all four of his whites and tossed in a black win over Vescovi for good measure. Anand also nailed his old foe Karpov just for fun. What is it about the Indian that makes his opponents play misguided Sicilians against him lately? Kramnik rolled out the Najdorf against him in Dortmund and was duly crushed. Karpov never plays the Sicilian, but trotted it out against Vishy yesterday with predictable results.

With two rounds to go the race for second is still hot. The race for first is as one-sided as Kasparov's 20-board simul on Saturday. He made a clean score against a group of talented Brazilian juniors rated 1900-2200 plus a bunch of amateurs who were there for the photo op, not a chance at a half point. A pity the world's #1 rated player couldn't have joined the world's #1 playing player in the rapid tournament to make it more interesting!