Linares R11: Anand in hot pursuit

The XXII Torneo Internacional de Ajedrez "Ciudad de Linares", a category 20 double round robin, is being held in the Spanish town of Linares and from February 23 until March 10 2005. During each round one player rests, and in addition there are full rest days on March 1st and 7th. The games start at 15:30h local time (CET = GMT 14:30h = 9:30 a.m. NY) in the Hotel Anibal. Live coverage of the event is expected on the official web site and on Playchess.com. We will be reporting daily on our news page.

Round eleven

The first game to end was Vallejo vs Adams, with neither player showing much inclination to do anything serious about their negative scores. The Hedgehog ended in a 29-move draw when Vallejo declined to play for more.

Leko-Topalov was only 19 moves long, but they took longer to execute. It was mainly Veselin Topalov who did the pondering, clearly looking for a way to perhaps score a point and keep in shouting distance to Kasparov. He was tempted by some subtle weaknesses in White's position, but when things came to a head Peter Leko coolly offered a draw and the Bulgarian accepted. With the same number of games and three rounds to go Topalov now trails the leading Kasparov by 1½ points.

Vishy Anand, who was in a similar position to Topalov, was having none of it. With the black pieces he went after Rustam Kasimdzhanov, who always looked like he would be completely satisfied with a draw.

Kasimdzhanov,R (2678) - Anand,V (2786) [B50]
XXII SuperGM Linares ESP (11), 06.03.2005
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.c3 Nf6 4.Be2 Bg4 5.d3 e6 6.Nbd2 Nc6 7.Nf1 d5 8.exd5 Nxd5 9.Qa4 Bh5 10.Ng3 Nb6 11.Qd1 Bg6 12.0-0 Be7 13.a4 0-0 14.a5 Nd5 15.Qa4 Qc7 16.d4 cxd4 17.Nxd4 Nxd4 18.Qxd4 f5 19.Qa4 Rad8 20.Rd1 f4 21.Ne4 Qe5 22.Bf3 b5 23.Qc2 Nf6 24.Nxf6+ Qxf6 25.Qb3 Rxd1+ 26.Qxd1 Rd8 27.Qe2 Bd3 28.Qe1 e5 29.Be2 Bxe2 30.Qxe2 e4 31.g3 e3 32.fxe3

Kasimdzhanov is already in big trouble. Anand pushes his f-pawn like a thorn into White's flesh: 32...f3! 33.Qxb5 f2+ 34.Kg2 Rf8 35.Qd5+ Kh8 36.Kf1 Qh6 37.Bd2 Qh3+ 38.Qg2 Qf5 0-1. Interestingly White's queen has made a total of 14 moves, which represents 37% of all moves played. Watch its path when you replay the game on our JavaScript board.

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Current standing

Scores Kasparov +4 Anand +2 Topalov +1 Leko 0 Adams –1 Kasimdzhanov –3 Vallejo –3

• All games so far in PGN

Note that Monday is a free day. From Tuesday onwards we will be reporting live from Linares.
That includes audio and video commentary from the playing venue on Playchess.com.

Schedule

Links

• Official web site
• All ChessBase reports
• ChessBase reports on Linares 2004
• ChessBase reports on Linares 2003