Topalov Wins Super GM Tournament and Regains #1 Ranking

Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria placed first at the Grand Slam Final Masters tournament in Bilbao, Spain, winning 150,000 Euros (over US$200,000) by winning 4 games, drawing 5 and losing only once (+3). World Champion Viswanahan Anand had one of his worst tournament in years, placing last with 8 draws and two losses (-2) in a field of six super Grand Masters. Danish wunderkind, 17(!)-year-old Magnus Carlsen and Levon Aronian tied for second place, with Carlsen having beaten Aronian both times they played in the double round-robin tournament. The other competitors were Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine and Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan.

By winning the tournament, Topalov will return to the top of the World Chess Federation rankings, which he had previously led from April 2006 until March of last year, when Anand reached #1 for the first time. Prior to March 2005, Garry Kasparov had been World #1 for nearly a decade.

Anand's poor performance may be due to the fact he was trying to hide whatever he has been preparing for his World Championship title bout with Vladimir Kramnik next month in Bonn, Germany with 1.5 million Euros at stake. Interestingly, Kramnik and Anand have played 125 times with Anand winning 19 games, losing 15 and drawing 91(!) times.

Anand Wins Linares-Morelia for 2nd Consecutive Year

This news came out a few weeks ago, but I think it's important to post here as well.

GM Viswanathan Anand of India, won the 25th edition of the Morelia/Linares super grandmaster tournament. The current World Champion, one of the two top-ranked players in the world, finished a half point (+4-1=9) ahead of GM Magnus Carlsen (Norway, +5-3=6). Carlsen, 17 years old, finished a half point ahead of GMs Levon Aronian (Armenia, +3-2=9) and Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria, +5-4=5).

Anand Leads Linares-Morelia 2008

World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand is currently leading the famous Linares-Morelia super-tournament at the halfway point by a half point with a score of 4.5/7. Last year, Anand became the world's highest rated player after he won Linares XXIV by a full point with a score of 8.5/14.

Linares is a tournament where the eight strongest players in the world are invited to compete in a double round-robin tournament (where everyone plays each other twice, once with Light pieces, and another with Dark pieces). The first seven games are played in Linares, Spain and the second half is played in Morelia, Mexico.

This year's tournament has World #3 Veselin Topalov, 17-year-old phenom World #13 Magnus Carlsen of Norway, World #9 Vassily Ivanchuk, World #10 Levon Arounian, World #8 Peter Leko, World #12 Teimour Radjabov and World #7 Alexei Shirov. Curiously, former World Champion and World #2 Vladimir Kramnik has skipped Linares for the second year in a row.

The New York Times chess blog Gambit has excellent coverage of the tournament as well as a very cool plug-in which allows one to view the games with annotations. Years ago Mad Professah used to be a chess player on the international circuit as a teenager and attended a few of the same junior tournaments as Anand "back in the day." We were usually the only two non-white people in the room.