February 2010 Archives

Several people have sent in the news that yet another Bobby Fischer project is getting fired up in Hollywood. The last one, mentioned here in 2008, was axed. This one would star Tobey Maguire, best known for playing Spider-Man in all three hit films, if not the inevitable fourth. He'll also be producing the Fischer film, the title of which may end up as "Pawn Sacrifice." Good screenwriter mentioned as well, but from the middling amount I know of the film industry, just about everything can change on a movie from the early days. Since Maguire is on board as a producer its chances of seeing the light seem decent. Let's just hope the movie ends in 1972 or thereabouts, the way Edmund Morris's first biography of Theodore Roosevelt ended with new president shaking hands of visitors to the White House right after his election.

Fighting to the last move, Topalov ended Linares with a win over Boris Gelfand that gave him clear first place on a +3 score. Like all of his wins here, this one was far from perfect, but it was also typical of his style, his refusal to quit, and his ability to exploit his opponents' mistakes to the maximum. Grischuk and Topalov began the round tied for first with most tiebreaks favoring the Russian defending champ. A few hours into the round thing were looking very good for Topalov. Vallejo had a strong position against Grischuk's Sicilian and Boris Gelfand had let his enthusiasm for swapping pieces get the better of him and lost an exchange to a simple trap. Another hour later and the picture had shifted again. Vallejo, still with a plus and with a few minutes more than Grischuk, forced a repetition. "The final position was the best one I had the entire game," Grischuk told me on Chess.FM afterward while waiting for Topalov's result. That meant if Topalov drew, Grischuk would get the trophy regardless of Gashimov's result. (I believe there was one arcane possibility of blitz tiebreaks if Grischuk, Topalov, and Aronian all won.)

Meanwhile, Topalov had, somewhat inexplicably, quickly given back the exchange to reach a R+4 vs R+3 endgame that was not at all simple to win, especially against a technical expert like Gelfand. But it was also hard to draw, as these things tend to go! Grischuk, who was in the press room consulting with his second, Khismatullin, eternal Linares kibitzer extraordinaire Ljubo Ljubojevic, and a computer, had more confidence in the computer and Gelfand than anyone else, saying he thought the Israeli would hold the draw and make him the Linares champion for the second year in a row. I say that about confidence in Gelfand because Grischuk admitted that he and the other GMs in the room couldn't find the draw for Black! But the computer was showing 0.00 and since the rook endgame was by then well into tablebase range in the search, there was no reason to doubt it. But it wasn't easy at all and, unfortunately for Grischuk, Gelfand showed why a few moves later with a losing mistake.

I was on the air with Alex Yermolinsky, the Yermonator doing a fab job in his Chess.FM debut, and rook endgame sage Speelman was also lending a hand. From all the tries they made the only thing that we were sure of was that there were many ways for Black to lose and very few for him to draw. In the end, the losing mistake was leaving his king on e8 instead of getting it off the back rank before pushing the a-pawn. This gave Black a winning difference over the line we'd been looking at much earlier that would have been reached (in a different move order than our analysis) after 49..Ke7 50.Kc7 a2 51.Rh7+ Ke6 52.Rh6+ Ke7 53.Ra6 Rxc3 draw. But with the white king still on c6 protecting the c5 pawn, it's a simple win.

Gelfand made things tough on himself with the strange king move to e8, and after a long think at that. 48..Ke6 was fine, staying out of trouble by keeping the white king or c5 pawn in the way of the white rook's access to the a-file after a check. Black is still threatening ..a2, so White can't make progress. Again, if the white king goes to c7 it's a draw because the king isn't protecting the c5 pawn, which gets picked off after ..a2. This isn't terribly difficult (by that late point) and to me this shows how Topalov owes so much of his success to handling pressure better than his opponents. Gelfand knows his endgames as well as anyone in the world and spent a long time on 48..Ke8?!, the first step on the road to oblivion he took on the next move with 49..a2?? White keeps both his pawns, the black pawn is frozen on a2 while the white king and pawns advance. Topalov finished with the pretty little flourish GM Yermolinsky had shown us much earlier, giving up his rook and promoting thanks to the shield provided by his doubled pawn. (The immediate 48..a2 also draws, if differently, thanks to the black king infiltrating. 49.Rd7+ Ke6 50.Ra7 Rb2 and White can only move his rook up and down the file. 51.Kc7 Kd5 or 51.c4 Ke5. Black can still go wrong after, say, 51.Ra5 Ke7 52.Kc7 and Black has to find 52..Rb5! to draw. 48..Ke6 seems easiest to me, but there's always a good chance I'm missing quite a bit.)

A flawed fighting game just like almost every other decisive Linares encounter this year, and so a fitting conclusion. Topalov didn't have his best stuff but he complicated constantly, pitched out of trouble again and again, and outplayed his opponents when it mattered most. Congratulations to him on his first Linares title! He collects 75,000 euros, $100,000 dollars. Grischuk pockets 50K euros.

Aronian picked up a consolation win of sorts, beating Gashimov in the final round to break his personal record streak of nine consecutive draws. He had a ways to go for the Linares record, however. In fact, that wouldn't even have been possible with this year's smaller field. Leko drew all 12 of his games in Linares 2005, the same year Topalov beat Kasparov in the final round of Garry's last tournament to tie him on points. Aronian will even add a rating point or two on the deal despite getting into serious trouble on several occasions and generally sleepwalking through the event. It's almost more impressive that he managed +1 undefeated while not playing very well, reminiscent of Kasparov's +1 here in 1998, also winning one and drawing the rest. Speaking of ratings, Topalov will be one point behind Carlsen on the next list, ruining a PR hype angle of being the world #1 as he takes on Anand in April. Vallejo was another winner in the final round, gaining a pair of companions in the cellar at +2 instead of finishing there alone. He and Gelfand finished winless, never a pleasant feeling.

For Grischuk, another excellent result. +2 was enough to win for him last year and he'd already won a critical game by beating Topalov in the penultimate round. In our brief chat he admitted his time trouble addiction was a weak point, though obviously you can't argue too much with the results he's been having lately. Gashimov didn't look ready for prime time here. He might be well on the way to having his Benoni problem beaten out of him after this. He lost two and was in very bad shape against Vallejo as well. A solid black repertoire is an essential piece of armor in the supertournament world, as Wang Yue and Dominguez found out last year. Gelfand, the veteran, picks his spots and plays less than the other elite stars, but he looked tired here.

Blindfolded eyes now turn to Nice and the Melody Amber tournament, where the stars will again be out in full constellation on March 13. Everybody who's anybody is there, excepting Topalov and Anand, who will be deep in training for their match, which begins April 23. Carlsen, Kramnik, Aronian, Ivanchuk, Svidler, and a very high-Elo etc. will play rapid and blindfold for our entertainment.

Defending Linares champ Alexander Grischuk stepped up big time in round nine in Linares by beating Topalov to tie him for the lead heading into tomorrow's final round. Instead of cruising to clear first with an easy draw with white against Gelfand tomorrow, suddenly there's everything to play for. Grischuk has black against Vallejo. The other games were drawn with medium to high degrees of tedium.

The matchup between the leaders did not disappoint. Out of a QID in which both players seemed to be trying to avoid surprises (I'll play a sideline. Oh yeah? 'll play even more of a sideline...), Grischuk got the sort of imbalances he needed to play for a win. Topalov failed to handle the exchanges very well, deciding to bail out by giving up two pieces for a rook and pawn. That's the opposite of where he likes to be in such swaps, always preferring activity over material. But Topalov being Topalov, he managed to get very active anyway, but at the cost of a pawn, leaving him dead lost if he couldn't keep the pressure up. Grischuk had some good karma built up and used it all on needing only two repetitions of position to reach the time control on move 40. It would have been a real test of testicular fortitude had he been forced to choose to go for it or repeat the third time with (once again) seconds on his clock.

With time to think it was clear, well, clear-ish, that there was little Black could do to prevent White from eventually untangling his pieces. Grischuk then made the interesting decision to give up his queen for an unusual R+B+N vs Q game. It likely would have been over faster had he played more directly, but with so much riding on the result he decided not to take any chances. Topalov didn't have many ways to complicate with just the queen and White carefully consolidated despite threatening to get into time trouble for the second time in the game. A great win for Grischuk and for Linares, which has already been diminished by the shrunken field and the lackluster performances from Aronian and Gelfand. Had Topalov waltzed off with his first Linares title after playing so spottily, if wonderfully ambitiously, it wouldn't have much seemed like Linares at all. This is supposed to be our premier event, a real crucible. And even if it's Linares Lite this year, at least now it feels like everyone has been in a fight.

Despite the official commentary saying yesterday that Grischuk would have the advantage on tiebreaks if he beat Topalov today, I haven't seen an explanation for that yet. Last year, and I got this wrong on the air today because I was going from memory (or lack of) instead of checking my own report from 2009, Grischuk got the title ahead of Ivanchuk on most wins but only after they were tied on head-to-head, which is first tiebreak. Second tiebreak is most wins, third is most wins with black. At least that's the way it was last year. (This confused me because I'm 99% sure it used to be most wins first.) But Grischuk and Topalov are tied on all three. If they go to TPR it will be Grischuk since he's lower rated than Topalov, but that's pretty silly even for tiebreaks. I wish they'd just split the title and have done with it. They do need a clear winner for the purposes of deciding the Grand Slam qualifier, however. I still don't see anything posted about how it will be decided if they tie tomorrow.

Another incentive for Topalov in particular is that +2 won't give him back the #1 ranking in time for his match with Anand, so Gelfand can't expect an easy day tomorrow. [Apparently +3 won't do it either, so nevermind. Sorry about the misinfo. I'm reliably informed that +3 would only be 2812.2, 0.7 behind Carlsen, so I was wrong on this from the start.] Some game notes late tonight. Round 10: Topalov-Gelfand, Grischuk-Vallejo, Aronian-Gashimov. Topalov gave a simul on yesterday's free day, scoring 18 wins and three draws.

Update: Just a few game notes before crashing. Still no final word on the tiebreak situation if Topalov and Grischuk both draw tomorrow. If they both win, Grischuk takes the title with more wins with black. Not a huge deal to me because I basically consider it a shared first anyway, and I believe they split the cash, but it might matter more to the players...

Topalov had some tough choices to make ealry on in the loss to Grischuk. He seems uncharacteristically unsure of himself, perhaps feeling the effects of missing a knockout against Aronian yesterday. One choice I discussed on ICC Chess.FM with GM Ben Finegold was on move 16, when Black is figuring out how to deal with all his hanging minor pieces on the queenside. Black has the bishop pair, and the uncontested dark-squared bishop might be quite valuable at some point. So it surprised Finegold when, after a substantial think, Topalov gave it up right off for the knight. At first it seemed to at least have the point of playing for the initiative instead of retreating with 16..Bb7 and defending. But Topalov had a more intriguing idea, lover of material imbalances that he is. The resulting position is better for White, and Grischuk steadily outplayed Topalov from there for a good stretch. His usual patient pressure didn't help much in a position where time was on Grischuk's side for once. The Russian champ still got into time pressure, but here it was a few minutes instead of a few seconds. As he nursed his material plus closer to the time control he missed the elegant 34.Bf1!, which activates the bishop (c4 next, with Rf1) breaks the coordination of the black rooks.

Topalov kept going for activity with the dubious 30..d3 instead of the obvious pawn capture. His instincts betrayed him again a few moves later when he doubled his rooks on the 7th instead of grabbing the e-pawn with 35..Rxe3. GM Yermolinsky, who is coming on Chess.FM for the final round, kibitzed that he thought Grischuk sort of bailed out with the queen sac when a few well-calculated variations would have finished things off. 45.Bd5! proves his point. If 45..Ra3 46.Ne5 and the white pieces are suddenly swarming, with threats of Nxg6 and e4. The game continuation looked rather inevitable, however, though Topalov could have dragged things out by holding on to his h-pawn. Big chess.

One of our frequent evergreen discussions in chess, and in this blog, is about the existence, or lack thereof, of luck in chess. I've come down on the side of calling it "good fortune" at worst, and not considering any win or loss undeserved. Players make mistakes, and as the saying goes, the player who makes the next-to-last mistake wins. Nobody in the world, if ever since Tal, understands this and uses this truth to his advantage better than Veselin Topalov. He has an uncanny ability to create complications that put his opponents under terrible pressure regardless of the objective soundness of his moves. He is a brilliant speculator, running right up to the edge and sometimes over it and yet proving again and again that he can outplay his opponents in the positions he creates. Topalov is proving it once again in Linares, where he has three wins, two of which came out of positions that would likely be called losing, or at least much worse, in the cold light of computer-assisted analysis.

And you know what? Great! Despite the computer dominance in preparation (and head-to-head play), chess is a human game and Topalov shows us this just about every time he sits down to play, god bless him. I'm not saying he intentionally plays into inferior positions at all, only that what a computer or post-mortem analysis reveals as inferior IS NOT ALWAYS INFERIOR AT THE BOARD. Watching live with a computer running blinds you to the reality that chess is very hard and that Topalov is a master of creating positions that are much harder for his opponent than for him. This, of course, is a preamble in defense of his wins against Grischuk and Vallejo in Linares last week, and even his first draw with Aronian. (His earlier win against Gashimov was much less fraught even if Black likely could have drawn with best defense.)

In both wins Topalov sacrificed and in both cases his opponent defended well for a while only to eventually succumb to the relentless pressure on the board and the clock. This is not Topalov being lucky. This is Topalov being Topalov. He finds the moves that create maximum complexity and difficulty. He doesn't live in the world of "what if." What if Grischuk had played ..Kh7? What if Vallejo hadn't left himself 50 seconds for the final ten moves of the first time control? Irrelevant. You may as well be saying that, well golly-gee, Topalov would be in real trouble if all of his opponents played like super-computers. No doubt true, and it's to his credit that he hasn't allowed that fact to affect his style, since training with computers can cow even the wildest imagination. (Kasparov once warned of this, saying that it takes energy not to feel "humiliated" when working with programs.) The young Mikhail Tal had to deal with this sort of thing, too, but those criticizing his "unsound" winning sacrifices weren't armed with 64-bit, quad-core truth machines.

Topalov's +3 score not only puts him in command in Linares, but it also puts him in position to retake the #1 ranking from Carlsen just in time for his world championship match with Anand in April. And that makes for much better press releases. As some wag in the comments pointed out, if Topalov had a poor showing in Linares they might have ended up with a situation uncomfortably similar to the Kramnik-Anand match Topalov and/or his manager Danailov ridiculed as a sideshow between the #5 and #6 in the world. Not going to happen now, not that it matters. To connect these threads, I'm hearing a lot of "yeah, but this stuff won't work against Anand." Perhaps not, though it's something of an ideal matchup since Anand is one of the all-time great tactical defenders. Mostly though, it all just sounds like sour grapes and hating from Topalov's detractors, most of whom can trace their antipathy back to his behavior during and after his world championship match loss to Kramnik in 2006. I shared many of those feelings, but let's not let them get in the way of his fabulous chess. Winning matters.

Grischuk bounced back today thanks to his opponent Gashimov risking the Benoni once too often. Apparently he at least occasionally shares his countryman Radjabov's attitude toward the openings with black, that getting positionally horrific positions is all right as long as you are guaranteed eventual tactical chances. In round 5 Gashimov was in deep trouble against Vallejo in a Benoni; just about every reputable line looks very good for White these days. But the Spaniard shattered like a dropped Lladró figurine at the first sign of black counterplay and Gashimov cashed in. It didn't work for him in the eighth round as it was Grischuk finding the tactics first and winning a pretty game.

Gelfand's Petroff is proving as invulnerable as Kramnik's these days. Other than the boredom often produced, it's increasingly hard to criticize the Israeli's switch to the Russian Defense from his Najdorf now that he's back in the top ten at the ripe age of 41. Gashimov tried something new but got the same old stale equality. Today it was Vallejo's turn to try to avoid being sucked into the initiative black hole that is the Petroff. A nominally better endgame wasn't nearly enough for him to make progress. King's Gambit or bust!

Gelfand would have come much closer to his first win had he played 39.Kg4! in his rook endgame against Grischuk instead of allowing ..h5. Black has to make a series of only moves to avoid getting mated. The mate threat of Raa8 forces 39..f6 40.Raa8 and now 40..Rf2 is the only move. 41.exf6 gxf6 42.Kf5 and 42..Rfe2 is forced. White nabs the f-pawn and keeps the pressure on. Aronian is also winless, if also as lossless as a FLAC file. He came close to changing one of those stats over the weekend. He had to scramble to hold a position with two rooks against Vallejo's queen in the 7th round. Aronian managed to set up a blockade position and the Spaniard eventually had to concede he couldn't make progress. Then on Sunday, Topalov was a tactical shot away from reaching +4, which he almost surely would have done had he found 34.Rxe4!! against the Armenian. The geometry is easy for a computer, but it's not easy to visualize that the black king is forced to the back rank after 34..Qxe4 35.Qc3+ since 35..Kxg6 36.Bc2 picks up the queen. 35..Kg8 36.Qc7 and the mate threat gets the rook back with a protected passed d-pawn that should make for an easy win. A narrow escape for Aronian, who has looked quite shaky in Linares despite stretches of brilliant play.

Topalov has a full-point lead with two rounds remaining, so his game with black against Grischuk on Tuesday will be for all the marbles. I'll be back on Chess.FM with GM Ben Finegold for the big show. Monday is an off day. Gotta mention we're wrapping up Linares with Alex Yermolinsky on the mic in the final round. Really looking forward to that. FCC violations, here we come!

Three more draws in Linares, the third of four rounds so far to finish with all points split. Today's set weren't nearly as exciting as yesterday's, but how could they be? Gelfand dithered against Topalov out of a Catalan and nearly ended up in trouble against the Bulgarian's forceful play. Similarly, Gashimov looked to be making progress against Aronian early and ended up on his heels and having to save a tricky endgame. Grischuk played the rarer 14.Kc3 in the so-called (why?) Wiesbaden Semi-Slav line in which Black sacs a piece for pawns and an open white king. Then he spent over an hour two moves later for the second day in a row. He held on to draw, though Speelman on ICC Chess.FM thought Black could have kept the pressure on with 27..Rb8 or otherwise not pushing the c-pawn yet.

Aronian continued the trend of Black playing ..d5 just about any time in the Lopez these days. I'm hardly an expert on the theory of the dozen Spanish lines popular at the moment, but we're certainly seeing many more early ..d5 pushes and I'm not even including the Marshall. One rather random theory we discussed online was that maybe it has something to do with the prevalence, not to say dominance, of computer-assisted preparation. Comps have no inclination for the epically intricate maneuvering of the traditional Ruy Lopez, the long-term positional play that earned it the name "The Spanish Torture," (I mean, "The Spanish Enhanced Interrogation Technique.") If comps can play a pawn break and don't see any reason not to, they will seek out the opening of lines and piece play at which they excel. Or this could all be BS. Aronian eschewed the typical backward Lopez maneuvering in this line with ..Nd8, ..Bf8, and the ..c5 push in favor of tossing out 12..d5 immediately and ignoring his weak e-pawn and backward c-pawn. Such is modern chess.

No hits, no run, no errors. That leaves Grischuk and Topalov in the lead on +1, which is convenient because they play each other in Thursday's fifth round, Topalov with the first move and fired up for his second white of the event. Free day Wednesday. Round 5: Topalov-Grischuk, Vallejo-Gashimov, Aronian-Gelfand.

Not much time to write tonight, but wow, what a round in Linares. Three interesting fights of the highest quality, all finishing drawn. Gashimov and Grischuk replayed their spectacular game from the World Team Championship just a few weeks ago in Turkey. Grischuk won that early candidate for game of the year by running his king all the way across the board to b2. Here he varied first with 15..0-0 and yet it was Gashimov who seemed to have the better prep. His 18.Rf1 put Grischuk in the tank for a long time. He eventually went with 18..g4, with 18..Nxe4 the main interesting alternative. LarryC ran through dozen of fascinating lines all the way through the endgame that eventually finished drawn.

Topalov was on the ropes in his old favorite, the Benoni, against Aronian. Topalov always finds a way to create counterplay and here he went to the necessary extremes with ..g5! and ..f6 to open up lines for his pieces. The saving drawing tactic at the end is fantastic, with 38..Nd6! and then the a-pawn winning back the piece to reach a theoretically drawn rook and bishop endgame down two pawns! Wow. Instead of trying to blast Topalov's interesting arrangement of ..Re7, ..Be8 apart, Aronian played it in Karpovian style with queenside maneuvering and slow progress. Topalov played a nice Nimzovichian pawn sac with 22..b5, after which all the white firepower is directed against his own pawn on b5. Topalov was probably planning 26..Nb3 and Larry thought maybe he'd missed 27.Rc6, which would have given White a very strong position. It's hard to say if Aronian missed a win somewhere with his pawn pair (33.e6!?) , but it was a hard-earned draw for Topalov, no doubt.

Gelfand put the squeeze on Vallejo and looked set to get back to an even score with the white pieces. The Spaniard's queen went walkabout to h4 and was in danger of getting trapped in all sorts of ways. His king was also in trouble and during the game we thought we might have found a forced win for White with 17.Bxd7+ Kxd7 18.Rd1! and the rook is coming to d4 to discover a shot on the black queen. Tricky stuff, and giving up your bishop for a pinned knight isn't the most human of moves. Vallejo was using a lot of time and erred again with 19..f6, after which he had only bad choices. With his time also getting short, he went for a pragmatic queen sacrifice. It paid off when Gelfand overreached, putting his king into traffic on c7. The more practical 33.Qe3, staying centralized and out of danger, would have been hard to meet. White simply goes after the b-pawn and tries to consolidate. Larry sacrificed a dozen pieces trying to find a mating attack for Black in some lines but it was never there. Gelfand ended up with two pieces for a rook and some small chances and both players looked accurate to the end of the draw. Another great fight.

I'll put up more game notes tomorrow or Wednesday when I have some more time. I have a lot of really cool stuff from Larry to sort out. I'm back on Chess.FM with Jon Speelman Tuesday for round 4: Gelfand-Topalov, Gashimov-Aronian, Grischuk-Vallejo.

The less said about the first round, the better. Not all draws are boring, but this was some high class swapitude. Unfortunately all three games went this way and it wasn't until the second round that Linares 2010 heated up. Grischuk beat Gelfand and Topalov took out Gashimov while Vallejo got nothing against Aronian's Berlin Defense. Both decisive games took a similar course, with a nagging advantage for white not looking like enough to win until time trouble had its wicked, ticky way with the defenders.

Gelfand was under pressure on the kingside and the right defensive setup is hard to find. 29..Rc7 looks like a good start, allowing the black pieces to defend along the 7th rank. After Grischuk's excellent 30.Qh4, threatening both Bg5-f6 and also to blast through on the h-file with Rh3, there's no defense. Gelfand could have dragged things out with 30..Kg8 31.hxg6 hxg6 32.Rh3! with the clever plan of rerouting the bishop again with g5-f6 and mating on h8. Grischuk's patience is also notable. The obvious 32.Rg7 immediately isn't at all easy to win after the queen gives itself up for the rook and bishop. But after 32.a5!, which threatens c4, Black has to weaken his position on the kingside and that same endgame is an easy win. If 32.c4 directly, 32..Bxc4 33.Rc3 b5 is possible. Subtle full-board play in support of a direct-looking kingside attack.

Topalov flexed his muscles by putting the squeeze on Linares virgin Gashimov. Black defended well for a long time, reaching Q+R vs Q+R with 4 vs 4 on the kingside. But Black had doubled pawns and very little time on the clock. Topalov is the best in the world at creating complicated dishes (some bob chorba, anyone?) from a few simple ingredients and he pushed until Gashimov cracked. Kasparov criticized 40..h5?? saying that he didn't think White could win if Black just held tight without giving up the key g5 square. Both sides slipped earlier, however. 37..Rb6 was better than giving up squares with 37..h6. Topalov could have ended things quickly with 39.Rh8! bringing the queen to f8 and then, in an amusing piece of computer geometry, the queen comes back across the board to attack the trapped black king from e2. Hard to blame Topalov for missing that one. He got it all back after 40..h5?? though, when just about any other move is better. Black can stay passive or go active with the pretty sac 40..f4!? and the rook endgame should be drawn.

A classic Topalov win, with relentless pressure leading to "luck" and making the most of his opportunities. I'm already getting excited about seeing whether or not Anand can defuse Topalov's dynamic power. Provoking him into going too far has worked in the past, but he's so good in complications it's a very dangerous game to play.

Round 3: Aronian-Topalov, Gelfand-Vallejo, Gashimov-Grischuk. I'm back on the air with ICC Chess.FM with the ever-exciting LarryC himself, Larry Christiansen. Gametime is 10am ET, 1600 local.

Just an excuse to bump one of our evergreens, chess in the movies and pop culture. The new Denzel Washington film "The Book of Eli" has a very brief chess appearance, with a slight twist. The bad guy, Gary Oldman, is shown playing chess with his girlfriend and he announces his move to her because she is blind. And you can tell the movie takes place in a really horrible, dystopian future because he says it in descriptive notation.

Anyone seen the 2009 "Joueuse"? Not sure about the market for chess romance films, with or without Kevin Kline, but hey, you never know. Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen had one of the all-time great sexy chess scenes in the original "Thomas Crown Affair."

Been buried in work for a long while and was wondering what some people were on about, saying Shirov missed a win in the final round against Dominguez at Corus. I figured, okay, yes, 28.Qh7+ gave very good chances, but still very sharp and difficult. Then I finally figured out that the gamescore I had downloaded, probably from a live broadcast page, was missing the final three half-moves of the game, ending with 29.Qh1. Ah. So in reality Dominguez blundered on his final move on the board and made a compensating brilliancy by offering a draw at the same time with both players in dire time trouble. Even with the 30 seconds of increment Shirov didn't have time to find 31.b4, deflecting the queen from its simultaneous control of a8 and d8 and winning instantly. Ouch for Shirov, since a win would have meant a very much deserved share of first place.

To tie in a news peg, Shirov gave a simul in Ottawa, Canada, yesterday and of course his only loss gets the headlines. (Score was actually +25 =9 -2.) It was to a 12-year-old, as this story tells it. Sharply played by the tween. Black's last is a blunder of course, but 15..Kd7 isn't so easy.

[Event "Ottawa Simul"]
[Date "2010.02.12"]
[White "Sharma, Pranav"]
[Black "Shirov, Alexei"]
[Result "1-0"]
[PlyCount "31"]

1. e4 c5 2. Nc3 Nc6 3. g3 g6 4. Bg2 Bg7 5. d3 d6 6. Be3 Rb8 7. f4 b5 8. Qc1 b4
9. Nce2 e5 10. Nf3 Nge7 11. f5 gxf5 12. Bh6 Bxh6 13. Qxh6 fxe4 14. Ng5 exd3 15.
Qg7 Rg8?? (15... Kd7! 16. Nxf7 Qf8 17. Qxh8 Qxh8 18. Nxh8 dxe2) 16. Bxc6+ 1-0

We all know the stories about future champions beating champions in simuls (Botvinnik over Capablanca probably the best known), so we'll keep an eye on Sharma.

Haven't seen the pairings posted yet, although at least the Linares website is alive in the nick of time. (Just in time to crash from server overload an hour into the round tomorrow.) There's also a Linares blog (both Spanish) that's been updating regularly for a while with good info. Such as the fact that for the first time they are implementing a version of the Sofia rules and prohibiting draw offers before move 40.

The biggest Linares news in the Spanish press, by far, is the announcement not of the 2010 field but of Magnus Carlsen agreeing to participate in 2011. Impressive celebrity clout, I must say. Topalov, who lives in Spain, is getting some decent press but the loss of his #1 ranking has reduced his news peg status, it seems. He's never won Linares, though he shared first with Kasparov in 2005. Aronian (2006) and Grischuk (2009, tiebreak over Ivanchuk) are the only former Linares winners in the field. As with Kramnik and Dortmund, there are so few winners of Linares because Kasparov won so many titles. He took seven and a half, while Anand and Ivanchuk have three each and Kramnik one and a half (splitting the title with Kasparov in 2000).

Gelfand played in six Linares events in the 1990s but hasn't been here since 1997. Even back then it was never his event. He finished a strong second to Kasparov in 1990 but I don't think he managed even a plus score after that. In 1997 he lost a wild KID to Topalov that brings back memories. PGN after the jump. Gashimov is coming off a miserable appearance at the World Team event, where he was unrecognizable and lost three in a row. He's been bobbing in and out of the top 20 for a few years now but has yet to put up the big win or beat the big boys. In the past two years I see only three wins against top-15 opposition: two against Shirov and a lovely mini against Gelfand from a Spanish team event. But he wasn't losing much either. And, as has already been noted, he hasn't had the greatest invites before now, so this is his chance. Or he could end up like Wang Yue, who played in just about every supertournament last year and after mediocre results now seems to have disappeared despite being in the top ten.

I'm really intrigued by Grischuk's recent run of form. Despite receiving Kasparov's highest praise when he debuted on the scene in 1999, he's been seen as a sort of exciting part-timer with tremendous talent, bad hair, and a middling work ethic. As more of a Morozevich-type crowd-pleaser than a supertournament winner. Now he's won Linares and the Russian superfinal in the same year. It might be the case that years have helped him settle down and that chess can coexist with his poker career. Aronian has largely stopped putting up the occasional dud and must now be considered a top favorite in any event he plays in. This can only be said about five players on the planet and it's no coincidence there's a 20-point rating gap between them and the rest. (Ivanchuk can also win anytime, anywhere, of course, but we all know he's never going to be consistent.)

The Linares field again: Topalov, Aronian, Grischuk, Gelfand, Gashimov, Vallejo.

Still nothing on the pairings page, but the official live page reveals Gelfand-Gashimov, Vallejo-Topalov, Aronian-Grischuk.

Update: All games drawn without many twists or turns.

Open tournaments, where the real fighters of the chess world battle to the death round after round, winner take all. Appearance fees are rare, hospitality tables rarer, and the players are packed in row after row, Grandmasters and amateurs alike. The need to play for a win in every game, the cliche about opens, is countered by the many short tactical draws. Two of the most powerful open tournaments of the year just finished and the strongest is in progress in Moscow.

The Gibtelecom Open in Gibraltar keeps getting stronger. This year they had one of those train-wreck finishes at the top that are the bane of all big open tournaments. An incredible 10 GMs tied for first with 7.5/10. Last year both Svidler and Milov scored 8 points. This year's winners included heavyweights like Adams, Kamsky, Bacrot, and Movsesian, as well as Gustafsson, the leader much of the way. Lenderman and Koneru made the big 10 by winning in the final round, Lenderman in a sharp battle with Fridman and Koneru by, well, apparently slipping something into her opponent's drink. I don't see a report on it, but I guess the poor guy flagged with an extra pawn in a drawn rook endgame. Probably cost him a pile of money. Strange. They play tiebreaks in Gibraltar by a complex system developed by the famous local monkeys. The top four players by formula play KO blitz. Adams came through, beating Gustafsson and then Vallejo to get the trophy.

As is often true of open tournament games, many of them are notable for having a certain air of desperation to them. Players know they have to go to great lengths to avoid draws, so you see curious moves that avoid simplification and quasi-suicidal maneuvering to keep winning chances alive. When both players go at it like this the results are entertaining. Fridman-Lenderman isn't really of that breed, but the finish is very pretty. Javakishvili-Sandipan is a wild slugfest.

The Moscow Open was the usual, a field with some second-tier stars and a litany of strong Russians you've never heard of. Konstantin Chernyshov was one of the four winners, for example. He's hardly an up-and-coming prodigy at 43, but he used the power of his mighty mustache to finish with 4.5/5 including wins against heavyweights Najer and Motylev. (Eastern Europe recently took the mustache title away from long-time champ Latin America.) He even took first on tiebreaks on 7/9 despite playing the Swiss Gambit and losing a game in the early rounds.

Many use the Moscow as a warm-up for the big kahuna, or the big blintz, the Aeroflot Open. It's currently underway with dozens of names you'll recognize battling a terrifying array of citizens of the country once known as the Soviet Union. I'd say that the American GMs who complain about the foreigners coming to the US and making things too tough should see how things are back in the motherland. I'd say that, except several Americans have done just that. Alexander Shabalov is there, as are Ehlvest and Kamsky. True, they are some of the ones who led to the complaining, not doing the complaining, but my point, if I had one, stands. Vietnam's Le Quang Liem, who tied for first at the Moscow Open, is the current leader with 3/3. Oddly, only three players have 2.5, Cheparinov, Timofeev, and Le's countryman, Nguyen. Young Kalmykian Sjugirov beat Naiditsch in a wild one, the black king getting executed on c1. For a wonderful, if tragic and doomed, kitchen-sink attack, check out Vasquez-Shabalov. Wow. For collectors, Le Quang Liem's win over Bu Xiangzhi has the merry middlegame "check met by check." Savchenko-Yudin is a cute miniature.

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The global economic downturn is hitting the chess world, at least in the Iberian peninsula. First the Bilbao Grand Slam was shrunk to four players. Now our traditional flagship super-event, Linares, though always on the precipice of municipal sponsorship in Andalusia, has been reduced to a six-player round-robin. It still packs a punch, and it's better than nothing at all, which is what we almost got according to Spanish news interviews with the organizers. Reports have been rife with comments about possibly canceling this year's event and how they're going to cover expenses. The co-hosting plan with Dubai fell through, but might still be in the cards for next year.

The players: Topalov, Aronian, Grischuk, Gashimov, Gelfand, Vallejo. Russia's new champion Grischuk comes back as the defending champion. Most eyes will be on Topalov, who hasn't played much, or particularly well, lately. He spectated Carlsen's big Pearl Spring win from the second position back in October and other than that has only a trio of games from the Euro Team Ch to show for the last six months. Will the loss of his #1 ranking rankle or will he keep things close to the vest in anticipation of his title match with Anand, still two months away?

Grischuk just had his best year ever and turned in a solid showing for Russia at the World Team Ch. There he beat Gashimov, another Linares participant. The Azerbaijani, one of three who seem to be taking turns in the top ten, is getting his first turn at a traditional supertournament. It's hard to call him a newbie though, since he's been a frontrunner in the FIDE Grand Prix series, all very strong all-play-alls. Aronian and Gelfand also had good years in 2009, Aronian beating the Israeli a few weeks ago at the World Teams. Local hero Vallejo is back again and will try to add to his "next to last instead of last" Linares list, which I think is 2/5. He hasn't been here since 2006, when he finished last but took out Topalov with black in a fantastic game.

Place your bets and make your picks. Hard to go against the winner in the head-to-head between Topalov and Aronian. Round one is Saturday the 13th, off days are the 17th and 22nd. Start time is 1600 local, 10am eastern. I'll be doing some ICC Chess.FM, except for weekends.