KOCHI, February 20: The Torneo Internacional de Ajedrez Ciudad de Linares is arguably the Wimbledon of chess. After 15 years of successful completion of the Super GM chess tournament, Linares is on its way to new horizon this year, with a new format and a reduced field.The category-21 event (average Elo 2,752), the highest held in the history of chess, beginning in Linares on Saturday, will have the presence of the seven best Grandmasters in the World, except Fide World champion Anatoly Karpov of Russia.
It's fashionable these days to have double round-robin tournaments to raise the category of the field and Linares has now embarked on this experiment. The category is lifted because the number of entries is limited to seven.The field includes World No 1 Garry Kasparov, No 2 Vladimir Kramnik (both Russia), Viswanathan Anand (India), Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukraine), Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria), Alexie Shirov (Spain) and Peter Svidler (Russia).
The Linares tournament is inseparable in character from its sponsorLuis Rentero, a businessman who has been holding this event in his Hotel Anibal, which is more or less the holy destination of the top chess pilgrims.
Rentero is an avid lover of chess though he carries it to such an extent that he takes his tournament closer to bull-fighting and insists that unfought draws were not acceptable to him. In the past, players were penalised for taking short draws. Nevertheless, this did not deter the top players from halting their pilgrimage to Linares every year.
Kasparov is undisputably the king here, but Ivanchuk, who won the title ahead of Kasparov in 1991, has carved a niche for himself here by doing well regularly.
Anand has had moderate success in Linares, except for a second place behind Kasparov two years ago. Yet, he too will have sweet memories of Linares as it was this tournament in 1991 that helped him serve a warning to the chess world that he was also a potential world-beater with his sterling displays against Kasparov and Karpov then.
Karpov, who won theevent in 1994 with a record performance rating, has been blacklisted by Rentero after the Russian skipped this tournament last year, preferring to campaign for election to the Russian Parliament.
It's doubtful whether any organiser has had so much say in any tournament in any game ! Yet, it is an honourable event because Linares gets the vote from the players. The odd number of entries will mean that one player will have a rest day per round. The first round commences on February 22, while February 27 and March 5 will be rest days. The final round is on March 9.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
