Sunday 17 February 2008

Linares-Morelia

The Category 21 (Avg Rating 2756) Linares-Morelia tournament is under way, and the organisers are happily sending out daily updates to chess bloggers and journalists. But getting information about the tournament isn't restricted just to us, as the tournament bulletins are available from the website. Although the bulletins are in Spanish (which I cannot read, but I'm sure more educated readers can) there is still plenty of information, including crosstables and game scores. Issue 3, which covered the first round, ran to 50 pages, covering not just the main event, but the large number of subsidiary round robins and swisses that have been organised alongside.
As to the actual play, Rd 1 saw something of a suprise with 75% (3 out of 4) games finishing decisively. Round 2 was only slight more peaceful with 2 games drawn out of the 4.
Current FIDE Champion Viswanathan Anand won in 30 moves first up against Alexi Shirov, but then came unstuck against Lev Aronian in Rd 2. Here is his Rd 1 win.


SHIROV,A (2755) - ANAND,V (2799)
XXV Torneo de Ciudad Morelia y Linares (1.1), 15.02.2008

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Nbd7 8.Qf3 Qc7 9.0-0-0 b5 10.Bd3 Bb7 11.Rhe1 Qb6 12.Nb3 Rc8 13.Qh3 (D)
13. ... Rxc3 14.bxc3 Qc7 15.Kb1 Be7 16.e5 dxe5 17.f5 Nd5 18.Bxe7 Kxe7 19.fxe6 fxe6 20.Qg3 g6 21.Rd2 Rc8 22.Qg5+ Ke8 23.Qg4 Nxc3+ 24.Ka1 Bd5 25.Re3 Nf6 26.Qh4 Qe7 27.Bf1 Bxb3 28.cxb3 Nce4 29.Rb2 Rc1+ 30.Rb1 Qc5 0-1

1 comment:

TrueFiendish said...

Encouragingly, these days there seem to be a lot of "proper" results in top-level grandmaster play, and plenty of wins with black. Sure, some days most or all games will be drawn, but they're fighting 'em out--very few short draws.