2003 City of Linares Tournament

With the end of the tournament nearing, the pressroom is becoming more and more crowded! Many new media persons are arriving to capture the moment of decision: Who will be the winner of this second leg of the grand slams of chess? (Corus, Linares, Dortmund) The positions at the top haven't really changed much in the 3 or 4 last rounds and it is clearly still an open question.

Carsten Hensel- Manager of Kramnik and Leko (and poker partner!)

In a way the key can be in Vishy Anand's hands: He has white against Radjabov today and then Leko with black and Kasparov with white in the last round. A win today and 1.5/2 in the last two rounds and it might be him! Not an easy task by any means, but totally not out of the question.

Kramnik who for now has the most points (but an extra game compared to the other contenders) is free today and then has Radjabov (with black) and Leko with white in the final game. Going 2/2 should guarantee him at least a shared first place and one would guess he will give it all he got.

GMs A. Rodriguez (left) and Ljubojevic

Leko, the only player who can not only tie Kramnik's number of points but also overtake him with a win today holds a key of his own to this puzzle. In round 13 he is white in another clutch game against Vishy and for dessert he has black against Kramnik! A hat trick means clear first place without partners and 'Gloria Mundi' all his own! This is such a tough effort and while I am not discounting it I will say it is not the most likely outcome and that scoring 2.5 or even 2 out of the 3 might suffice.

The 4th man in this close running, Garry Kasparov might be having the (relatively!) easier pairings: Black today versus Pono, who is playing better in the second half of this tourney but still off-form, then white against Vallejo where he is a heavy favorite, and finally as mentioned before: black against Anand. It will be poor speculation to think that the big guy is thinking of anything less than 100%. He already gave away all the points or half points he could afford and this is 'tour of duty' time for him. Granted, from the start Linares 2003 has not been 'his tournament' like in past years and he is not showing his very best but he has no second when it's a do-or-die!

Looking at the slow pace of progress in the last few round and the cautiousness practiced by the players, it is not unlikely that this mystery will be solved only after the end of the last round, with its two high-voltage encounters between Kramnik - Leko and Anand - Kasparov.

Rd 12 games (Or: what REALLY happened):

Anand - Radjabov:

GM Anand vs GM Radjabov

Vishy stays loyal to the 8.Nc4 line of the Sveshnikov that he adopted in Corus. Radja, who also played there makes sure he is not repeating Ponomariovs hunt for the e pawn that turned out badly but plays a wild new move early on with 10…h5!? Vishy calmly kept developing and 0-0 with disregard to the advance of the h pawn. 15.Ne3 was played quickly but why not just 15.c3 instead? That N went back to d5 soon anyways. 18.Re1 needs a word of explanation- it was designed to discourage any …Bh3 ideas, which now can be answered with Bf3, neutralizing it. I am curious what Anand had in mind after 19…b4 keeping the a file closed and threatening to soften c3; It certainly looks safer than the game. On move 23 it was Vishy's turn to play an odd move in 23.b4 where we expected 23.Ra6 or 23.Qd3 with white in complete control. After the game Anand commented that 23…Kg7 made him feel unhappy all of a sudden but that was true only till he saw Radja follow it up with the poor concession 24…Bxd5? When 24…Ne7 looked safe enough (25.Ra7 Rb7). Another moment of criticism came when black declined to trade on e3 with 27…Rhc8 and after 28.Bh6+ white was tickling the dark squares around the black K with many threats while the Bb6 black had was 'shooting in the air'. Lastly, with black's position already in strategic ruins, he embarked on a loss-accelerating adventure with 30…Rc4, 31...Rxe4? and 32…Nf6 and had to resign at once. Yet another almost completely smooth performance from the Indian GM and a tough experience for Radjabov.
Analysis by Alterman & Doss in PGN and Palview

Ponomariov - Kasparov:

Where are you Garry?

In an early stage of this Nimzo Indian defense Kasparov was burning a lot of time deciding how to continue against the rarely seen (but theoretical) 7.d5. He had to choose among 7…exd5 8.cxd5 Nxd5 9.Bxh7+ Kxh7 10.Qxd5 which is known as

GM Ponomariov vs GM Kasparov

pretty ok for black, a more aggressive 7…Bxc3+ 8.bxc3 Na5!? Or as he chose 7…Ne7 and after 8.e4 d6, like Short once played. 11.Qc2 was quite a dull move and Garry in simple means equalized with a trade on d3 and a Q trade offer next. I suppose he could have literally made a draw with 16…Bxc3 and 17…Ne4 but my guess is he wanted to keep the game going risk free. 18…b5 was as good a try as he could muster to try and invite his young opponent to open some files and activate Kasparov's pieces but 19.b3 wanted none of that. The consequent opening of the b file didn't change much, all Rooks were traded and after a few more uneventful moves Pono offered a draw that Garry accepted without thinking.

Vallejo Pons - Leko:

GM Vallejo vs GM Leko

The couple was following an old game between Kasparov and Shirov from 1986(!) (and some correspondence games) in this crazy English were white loses some time and the right to castle but builds a strong center. Normally white is the one to offer a pawn as he did with 9.b4 but black made it a gambit himself with 9…Bg7. 16.Nb1 was the first fresh move and voices were heard expressing concern for Leko who already consumed half of his allotted time to get to this position! A move later, GM's and Fritz alike thought that Peter was in dire straits. Paco could choose among many attractive continuations, all quite promising such 18.Rxc4!? Qxc4 19.Nfd2 with dxc6 to follow as Illescas suggested, or the simple 18.Nbd2 that Fritz and others thought was close to winning. Paco went with Illescas's idea but with 19.Nbd2. Events kept sliding downhill for the Hungarian GM when he played 22…fxe4?! Maybe he was anticipating answering 23.Ng5 with 23... Bh6 but seeing the fantastic 24.Qg4+ e6 25.Nc4!! which wins after 25... Qxc4 26.Nxe4, eyeing Nd6+ and the B on h6 (worse is 25... Bxg5 26.Qxe6+ crushing!)

The Q trade on move 27 brought no relief of course: The 2 pieces are simply much better than the R in such positions. It does take some maneuvering and slowly progressing, but it was obvious that Paco is about to celebrate his first win here. It is possible that black could have resisted better with moves like 28…Bd4 instead of 28…Bc7?! And the Rooks tango in and out of the d5 square, but it was simply bad. In time trouble (more for Peter than Paco) The R and 2 N squad was close to mating the traveling black K and soon after the time control Leko sadly acknowledged defeat, to the great delight of the locals. What a bad time to lose and what a super game for Vallejo!