Linares Super GM Tournament 2010

BY: BOBBY ANG

(As published in Chess Piece, BusinessWorld, on March 8, 2010)

27th Linares Super GM Tournament 2010 Linares, Spain Feb. 12-25, 2010
Final Standings

1. GM Veselin Topalov BUL 2805, 6.5/10

2. GM Alexander Grischuk RUS 2736, 6.0/10

3. GM Levon Aronian ARM 2781, 5.5/10

4-6. GM Francisco Vallejo Pons ESP 2705, GM Boris Gelfand ISR 2761, GM Vugar Gashimov AZE 2759, 4.0/10

Average ELO 2757, category 21

Former world champion Veselin Topalov has notched yet another feather in his cap by winning the super GM tournament in Linares for the first time in his career. Yes, I know, in the 2005 edition he defeated Kasparov in the last round (this was the very last game of Kasparov’s professional chess career) and tied Garry for first, but back then the tie-breaks went against the Bulgarian and he was placed only second. Here now in 2010 Topalov won it solo, so no tie-breaks were needed.

UK’s Everyman Chess (formerly Cadogan Books) recently came out with a series on "Chess Secrets," and its first book was The Giants of Chess Strategy featuring Vladimir Kramnik, Anatoly Karpov, Tigran Petrosian, Jose Raoul Capablanca and Aron Nimzowitsch. No question there. The second book was on Great Attackers and featured Garry Kasparov, Mikhail Tal and Leonid Stein. No surprise there either. But the third was The Giants of Power Play and had Veselin Topalov, Efim Geller, David Bronstein, Alexander Alekhine and Paul Morphy. Power Play? What is Power Play?

The author Neil Mcdonald notes that whereas a great strategist like Kramnik may make chess seem like an easy game, the Power Player makes it look complex -- it is full of profound, unexpected ideas and stresses the human side of the game. "We are reminded that chess is a fight between two creative minds rather than the solving of a logical theorem."

The Power Play Style combines preparation, psychology and dynamism. To summarize McDonald’s thesis, a power-player tries to win with either color, is characterized by deep theoretical preparation in order to gain some sort of advantage from the opening, and tries to set complex problems for his opponent. "Time trouble isn’t regarded as a nuisance but rather as the chance to confront the opponents with problems he will struggle to solve," and "Above all, the byword of power play is imbalance. A position with mutual weaknesses and a disrupted pawn structure contains room for creativity -- and blunders by the opponent."

GM Veselin Topalov lived up to those words in Linares. In all of his games he would put his opponents under terrible pressure regardless of the objective soundness of his moves. He won four games, and two of them (vs Vallejo and Grischuk) came from very doubtful positions, maybe even losing. The other two were also not "clean" wins but hand-to-hand fighting where Topalov just refused to quit and kept coming at his opponent until they made a few mistakes which he exploited to the maximum. Let’s take a look at one of these.

Topalov, Veselin (2805) – Grischuk, Alexander (2736) [B90]
XXVII SuperGM Linares (5), 18.02.2010
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Chess is a human game, and Topalov proves this every time he sits down to play. God bless him.