Games - Linares chess tournament

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	Games - Linares chess tournament

The annual Linares chess tournament, usually played around the end of February, takes its name from the city of Linares in the Jaén province of Andalusia, Spain, in which it is held. It is sometimes described as the Wimbledon of chess. It is one of the strongest annual tournaments held on the chess tour, along with the Corus chess tournament and Dortmund chess tournament.

The event, sponsored by Luis Rentero, was first held in 1978. At that time it was not an elite event and was won by the relatively unknown Swede Jaan Eslon. After the following year's event, it was held every other year until 1987 when there was no tournament. That year Linares was the site of the Candidates Final, the match to determine who played World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov for his title, with Anatoly Karpov playing Andrei Sokolov. Since 1988 the Linares chess tournament has been held every year with the exception of 1996, when the Women's World Championship was held.

Linares is a seven-player, double-round-robin event (that is, each participant plays everybody else twice, once with each colour).

Luis Rentero is notorious for being a strong opponent of short draws in chess, to the point that in 1991 he offered cash bonuses for playing longer games. Linares tiebreak decisions are awarded to whichever player has had more wins.

The 2006 edition of this tournament has the distinction of holding the first half of the games in the city of Morelia, Mexico. The official website for the second half of 2006 is http://www.marca.com/linares/2006/index.html.

Winners

1978 Jaan Eslon
1979 Larry Christiansen
1981 Anatoly Karpov
and Larry Christiansen
1983 Boris Spassky
1985 Ljubomir Ljubojević
and Robert Hübner
1988 Jan Timman
1989 Vassily Ivanchuk
1990 Garry Kasparov
1991 Vassily Ivanchuk
1992 Garry Kasparov
1993 Garry Kasparov
1994 Anatoly Karpov
1995 Vassily Ivanchuk
1997 Garry Kasparov
1998 Viswanathan Anand
1999 Garry Kasparov
2000 Garry Kasparov
and Vladimir Kramnik
2001 Garry Kasparov
2002 Garry Kasparov
2003 Péter Lékó (with the same score as Kramnik; won on tiebreak because he had more wins)
2004 Vladimir Kramnik
2005 Garry Kasparov
(with the same score as Veselin Topalov
; won on tiebreak because of more wins with black)
2006 Levon Aronian

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Linares chess tournament ]

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