The Hindu : Anand starts with black pieces

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 24, 2002

Sport

Sport - Chess

Anand starts with black pieces
By Arvind Aaron

LINARES, FEB. 23. The City of Linares chess tournament was inaugurated on Friday after cultural activities during which the opening draw numbers were made. Significantly, the draw numbers of four players who took part in the 1998 edition were similar to the earlier edition.

Viswanathan Anand starts the tournament with black pieces against Alexei Shirov. He will need to play the Caro-Kann defence and also win the game and the tournament to make things just like the other year.

Besides Anand and Shirov, Garry Kasparov and Vassily Ivanchuk, who also played in the 1998 edition, drew identical numbers. Michael Adams, FIDE World champion Ruslan Ponomariov, Vallejo (who replaces Vladimir Kramnik), Veselin Topalov and Peter Svidler from the 1998 edition drew numbers of the replaced players.

Michael Adams starts with a bye, Ponomariov faces countryman Ivanchuk for a second time this year with white and debutant Vallejo faces Kasparov in the opener with the white pieces. With byes coming into place, the need for standings doesn't make sense since a 0/1 start with a bye in round one could turn out better than a 0.5/1 in the long run. The tournament format is the same as in 1998, 14 rounds with 12 games and two byes per player.

The seven draw numbers: 1. Michael Adams (Eng), 2. Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukr), 3. Alexei Shirov (ESP), 4. Francisco Pons Vallejo (ESP), 5. Garry Kasparov (Rus), 6. Viswanathan Anand (Ind), 7. Vassily Ivanchuk (Ukr).

Winner of the Wijk aan Zee Tournament this year, Evgeny Bareev of Russia started his campaign with an

opening round victory over Peter Leko of Hungary in the NAO Chess Masters at Cannes, France on Friday evening. This 10-player category 18 tournament runs from February 22 to March 3.

The results (round one): E.Bareev (Rus) bt Peter Leko (Hun), Boris Gelfand (Isr) bt Igor Nataf (Fra), Veselin Topalov (Bul) bt Alexander Morozevich (Rus), Joel Lautier (Fra) drew with Etienne Bacrot (Fra), Anatoly Karpov (Rus) drew with Laurent Fressinet (Fra).

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