Publicaciones de David Llada

[Escrito en Madrid, el 8 de marzo de 2008; publicado en ruso en la revista "64" en su número de abril]

Going to Linares -and this has been my ninth visit- always brings me the same feeling: It is kind of a “déjà vu”, the feeling of travelling to a place where time got stuck in the past. It starts when you board the train in Madrid station, and little by little you begin to see familiar landscapes -full of olive trees- that probably haven’t changed much along the past decades. Then you arrive in Linares to find the same hotel and almost the same faces – not to mention the same menu day after day.

If I had to point out a remarkable change on this year´s edition, it would be the change of the venue. The “Wimbledon of chess” moved this year from the tiny hall in the Anibal Hotel to the much more appropriate scene of Linares theatre. To have a wider scene not only improved the general image of the tournament, but also allowed to organise an interesting parallel event, the Iberoamerican Championship, in which the best latino players took part and whose winner was no other than Julio Granda.

Apart from that, very little has changed, and the mentioned feeling of déjà vu was strengthened by the fact that the tournament had a very similar conclusion to last year´s edition: Vishy Anand reached the final phase of the tournament as the sole and solid leader, with only one other competitor giving the serious impression of having chances to reach him: It was no other than teenager Magnus Carlsen.

The tournament -as well as it did in the two previous editions- held its first half in Mexican territory, in the beautiful city of Morelia. There the World Champion started with a victory, but then suffered what seemed to be a serious setback when he lost on the second round with white to Aronian. In a Marshall, the Indian tried a variation different from the one he played last year in the same country against the same rival, where he chose 12.d4. This time Vishy went for 12.Re1, and in unknown territory, Aronian showed that he has a terrific sixth sense to “feel” this kind of positions derived from the Marshall.

However, the Indian king soon overcame this hindrance, and as soon as the next day he recovered by taking the whole point from one of his “customers”, Magnus Carlsen: Anand had already defeated him twice in Linares-Morelia in 2007 and in Wijk aan Zee earlier this year (here Anand was also quite lucky, I must say). From then on the tournament went very smoothly for Vishy, who managed to win with a +3 balance, drawing his last 6 games without too much effort; not even the fact of facing the most uncomfortable rival in the last round -Veselin Topalov- seemed to alter his calm and self confidence. But I must warn Vishy that drawing his last six games in a row and getting 2 of his 4 victories against the local player -Alexei Shirov- won’t make him very popular in Linares! Anand is winning lately more games with the black pieces (as was the case in this tournament), something that happened to Kasparov along several periods in the past; I think that Kasparov’s theory to explain this is still valid: against the unquestionable leader, the other players tend to play for a draw with Black, and only try their luck with the white pieces, thus allowing the number one to get an open game and show his strength.

As for Carlsen, his second place here is of course a great success. But I would remark specially the regularity he is showing in the top events: Second in Linares last year, shared first in Corus, and second again this year in Linares, all in all, a list of results that wouldn’t embarrass a true World Champion, so coming from a 17-year-old youngster, it is very impressive. Despite not feeling quite at home during the Linares half (he decided to move out of Anibal Hotel, because they failed to provide him with a proper internet connection) Carlsen showed in this tournament a very dynamic, optimistic and uncompromising chess which added lots of excitement to the tournament. With 5 victories and 3 losses he made a great contribution to the low percentage of drawn games in Linares (only 55%). True, Topalov gave away a decisive half a point against the Norwegian with his terrible blunder 34…Nc6??, but in the rest of the games Magnus showed that he masters all the aspects of the game: the endgame he won against Shirov (and the Spanish-Latvian can be counted as one of the finest specialists on this field) is well worth to have a look at. And his first victory over Topalov on the black side of the Alekhine defence is something you don’t see everyday in top-level tournaments.

Third was Aronian who, apart from his impressive victory over the champion, had a somewhat discreet tournament. It seems to me that in several games he didn’t get the positions he enjoys to play, being forced to accept some brief, dull games. All in all, third is a good position in such a selective event, and Aronian had already ensured his spot on the Grand Slam final thanks to his victory in Corus.

Veselin Topalov, famous for his impressive come-from-behind runs, created big expectation when, for a change, started the tournament with 2,5 out of 3. Morelia hasn’t been his favourite place to play in previous years, but this time it seemed that it would be different. Sadly, it wasn’t, and each win was followed by a loss. The worst moment for him came when he blundered against Magnus, allowing a checkmate that he won’t easily get out of his mind.

On the fifth place we have Radjabov, who had the chance to come back to Linares after the sad circumstances that forced him to withdraw in the last moment in 2007, when his laptop (containing all his preparation) was stolen from his hotel room just a few days before the start of the tournament. It was a nice gesture from the organizers (and particulary from Juan Fernandez, Linares Mayor) to invite him again, in order to compensate for such a deplorable incident.

Ivanchuk fell to sixth place with -1, counting 3 losses and only two wins (both against an unrecognizable Peter Leko). Once again -and this is the same story year after year- he played some very good games, but blew several points in time trouble, adding a lot of drama to the tournament. Specially dramatic was to see how he managed to turn a forced win against Aronian into a loss, by hanging a bishop.

As for Leko, he lived a hell of a tournament: for a player who is used to suffering a very low rate of defeats per year, losing 5 games in the same event must be really hard. This is without a doubt his worst result in many, many years. In several games (like the second fight against Topalov) he was simply outplayed against opponents who showed their best against him- and at the same time he lacked chances to score whole points due to his restrictive style of play and openings repertoire.

The table was closed by Alexei Shirov, who couldn’t break the annoying tradition -at least for us, the Spanish reporters- of the local player taking the last place. I am sure the organizers have thought about inviting more than one Spaniard for next year´s edition as they do in Corus, and so at least one of them won’t finish last (or in the worst case, will only share last)

Now seriously, plans for next year remain uncertain for the moment. During the Morelia half of the tournament no one was optimistic about the Wimbledon of chess being held there again, and the Mexican organizers suggested something about hosting their part of the tournament every two years, due to financial difficulties. But then Linares was full of rumours about secret bids from many different cities: So far I have heard about Moscow, New York, and also a certain Nordic country. As always, time will tell, but for now no decision has been made.