Right from the start, Anand was seen pressing for some advantage and it came after some real hard work. However, Karjakin did his bit to keep finding difficult defensive moves and in the end the Indian had to settle for perpetual checks to force the split of the point.
World number one and local star Magnus Carlsen played a vintage endgame to beat Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan on an exciting day that also saw Armenian Levon Aronian scalping for Norwegian Jon Ludvig Hammer.
With just three rounds to go in the 10-player round-robin tournament, Karjakin continued to lead the table on 4.5 points with Carlsen closing in with four points in his bag.
Nakamura and Aronian share the third spot another half point adrift while Anand slipped to joint fifth spot along with Svidler having three points apiece. Topalov and Radjabov are on seventh spot with 2.5, a half point more than Wang Hao while Hammer was again pushed to the bottom on 1.5 points.