Linares R7: Kasparov leads at half-time

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 seven

After a free day for all players nobody seemed really eager to do prolonged and vigorous battle on this Wednesday afternoon. In fact the entire round was over in just over two hours of play. The longest game was Adams vs Anand, which lasted 28 moves. And this was mainly because of a 30-minute think by Anand at move 20.

We are told that Garry Kasparov gave a simultaneous exhibition on the rest day, which is quite atypical in a tournament of this strength. His Ruy Lopez game against Veselin Topalov saw him come under light pressure and concede a draw in 21 moves.

Francisco Vallejo and Peter Leko were the most peaceful of this rounds participants, requiring just 13 moves to convince themselves that there was no point in thinking of a win today.

• Click here to replay today's games in a separate window.

Current standing

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

• All games so far in PGN

Linares Factoids

In our introductory Linares 2005 report we gave you a brief history of all 21 previous editions of this tournament, asking you to mine the data and extract interesting factoids – little nuggets of information that catch your attention. Here is a first installment provided by Henrik Karlzén of Mölndal, Sweden.

• The largest winning margin – the number of points the winner was ahead of the field – was three points, achieved by Garry Kasparov in 2001. Twice the margin was 2½ points, scored in 1994 by Anatoly Karpov and in 1999 by Garry Kasparov. Five time there were joint winners.

• The largest plus/minus rating performance was +237 by Anatoly Karpov in 1994, and -268 by Garcia Gonzales in 1981.

• The highest winning percentage ever was 85% by Karpov in 1994, with 11/13 or +9. The lowest winning percentage ever was 58%, with (7/12 by Leko and Kramnik in 2003 and a +2 by Kramnik in 2004.

• The greatest fighting spirit, defined by the number of decided games, was Kasparov with 67/144=47%, followed by Shirov with 49/106=46%. Anand scored 53/123=43%, Kramnik 30/95=32%, and Leko 14/58=24%.

• The only undefeated players in the history of Linares were Roberto Debarnot and Ochoa de Echaguen – both played only in 1978 – and Ulf Andersson, who played in 1983.

• The category and average rating developed over the 22 tournaments as follows:



Year Cat. Aver.   Year Cat. Aver. 1978 05 2363   1994 18 2685 1979 09 2459   1995 17 2654 1981 13 2567   1997 18 2700 1983 14 2598   1998 21 2752 1985 14 2594   1999 20 2733 1988 15 2602   2000 21 2751 1989 16 2628   2001 19 2721 1990 16 2628   2002 20 2732 1991 17 2658   2003 20 2733 1992 17 2658   2004 20 2731 1993 18 2676   2005 20 2743

• The highest average rating and category (21, 2752) was achieved in 1998. The average rating stayed the same twice, in 1989/90 and 1991/92, and was the same in 1999 and 2003.

• The total number of games played each year in Linares was 45, 66, 66, 55, 66, 66, 55, 66, 91, 91, 91, 91, 91, 66, 42, 56, 30, 30, 36, 42, 42. The total of all 21 tournaments was 1284. The 1000th game was played in the 1997 tournament.

• The names of 12 out of 25 winners (48%) started with a "K". Second with 3/25 comes "I" as in Ivanchuk.

We await more factoids and interesting statistics on the Linares tournaments.

Schedule

Links

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