Moscow: World champion Viswanathan Anand was off to a disappointing start, suffering a rare defeat as white against Fabiano Caruana of Italy in the first round of the Tal Memorial chess tournament in Moscow.

On what turned out to be a tough day for the world champion, Caruana did everything right after sacrificing a pawn in the middle game and Anand had little clues to better the judgement of the young Italian genius.

Playing the white side of a Ruy Lopez, Anand was surprised to find Caruana playing one of the topical systems that involves a pawn sacrifice, which once declined, became a topic of discussion.

Anand finally had to take a pawn on the queen side but Caruana had built a fine counter-attacking resource by then.

As the endgame arrived, Anand was already staring at defeat losing two pawns in tandem and Caruana made no mistakes to score his first victory against the world champion.