Linares 2009 Round 12 Pairings and Results

Here are tomorrow's pairings at Linares, Spain's super tournament. A reminder, the tournament is a double round robin with 8 players, resulting in 14 rounds. So counting today's round, there are still three to go. After this tournament, on March 14 the Amber Tournament starts with many of the top players, including GM Anand, GM Topalov and GM Kamsky for a few, something to look forward to watching, but remember it's half rapid an half blindfold!

Again, I will try to update the games as they end. (Today is the last rest day)

Round 12 Pairings

T. Radjabov L. Dominguez
L. Aronian Wang Yue
V. Anand V. Ivanchuk
M. Carlsen A. Grischuk

Linares 2009 Round 12 Pairings and standings after round 11

Here are the pairings for Round 12, just two more rounds after this one in the 14 round double-round robin tournament.

T. Radjabov L. Dominguez
L. Aronian Wang Yue
V. Anand V. Ivanchuk
M. Carlsen A. Grischuk


Standings after round 11:

1 7.0 GM Alexander Grischuk RUS 2733

2 6.0 GM Vassily Ivanchuk UKR 2779

3-5 5.5 GM Magnus Carlsen NOR 2776
GM Viswanathan Anand IND 2791
GM Levon Aronian ARM 2750

6-7 5.0 GM Wang Yue CHN 2739
GM Teimour Radjabov AZE 2761

8 4.5 GM Leinier Dominguez CUB 2717

Linares 2009 Round 11 Pairings And Results

As usual, I will try to update the games when they are finished, I got distracted yesterday when evaluating the Carlsen-Wang Yue game, TransWarp had finished it's game with GM Dreev, so I went back to eval the game, in the time of the game with Dreev, GM Wang Yue had achieved a -1.00 advantage, yet other evaluations by other people, who often spammed with the whole line taking up 3 lines of the kibitz room's chat, showing a 0.00 eval...yet as I watched and TW eval'd the game, it was continuous advantage to GM Wang. No one really believed TW's eval, so I just left, there were so many people throwing in evals from Fritz to Crafty to Rybka or pasting ChessOK's Rybka eval. I might eval a game today, I don't know...supposed to start in about a half hour from this post time. Well, I think after today's reaction by some people watching the Grischuk-Radjabov game about my evals, I will just set kib to 0 and watch on my own. Just tried to help those who OFTEN ask for comp evals. Oh well.

Round 11 Pairings:

A. Grischuk 1/2-1/2 T. Radjabov
V. Ivanchuk 1/2-1/2 M. Carlsen
Wang Yue 1/2-1/2 V. Anand
L. Dominguez 1/2-1/2 L. Aronian


An interesting game, black may have had winning chances according to Deep Rybka 3, but GM Levon Aronian took advantage of GM Leinier Dominguez's misplay with a great move to save the draw, ending the game in stalemate!

Linares 2009 Round 8 & 9 catchup

I missed round 8 and 9 again due to not feeling well, it's not like the flu or anything, just sometimes the polymyositis (stable) and all the meds (over 20/day) have an effect on the body that just "lays you up", a quote I heard in my childhood up in South Dakota, it was 7 degrees F here today in Kansas, I would hate to see what the temp was up there! I'm just not used to it anymore, I remember as kids we would put 3 or 4 pairs of socks on, couple pairs of pants and shirts, plus winter coat and go outside in this weather and play American Football, when there was a snowbank in the endzone, would could pretend we were our heroes (Tony Dorsett when running and Roger Staubach when passing), and dive into the snow like we were hurtling a huge defensive line to get the touchdown. The thought of hurtling myself over anything just plain scares me now! OWW! I can't even dive over a crack in the sidewalk, but they get me! :) I noticed something, it's not slow-motion like when you were a kid, just BOOM! On the floor or sidewalk, lawn, whatever...heaven help anything below me!

Well to Linares...

Round 8 Results

T. Radjabov 1/2 V. Anand
M. Carlsen 0-1 L. Aronian
A. Grischuk 1/2 L. Dominguez
V. Ivanchuk 1/2 Wang Yue


Round 9 Results

V. Ivanchuk 1/2 T. Radjabov
Wang Yue 1/2 A. Grischuk
L. Dominguez 0-1 M. Carlsen
L. Aronian 1/2 V. Anand


Stsndings after Round 9

1 6.0 GM Alexander Grischuk RUS 2733

2-4 5.0 GM Vassily Ivanchuk UKR 2779
GM Magnus Carlsen NOR 2776
GM Levon Aronian ARM 2750

5 4.5 GM Viswanathan Anand IND 2791

6-8 3.5 GM Leinier Dominguez CUB 2717
GM Wang Yue CHN 2739
GM Teimour Radjabov AZE 2761

I do have to say that GM Anand's position in the pack is a surprise to me, but I guess if you are the World Champ and the title is not on the line, you don't have as many worries, it will also be interesting to see how the Amber tournament goes, although it's rapid and blindfold chess, it's always a very interesting event. As an added plus, World Champion Viswanathan Anand (India), Levon Aronian (Armenia), Magnus Carlsen (Norway), Vasily Ivanchuk (Ukraine), Gata Kamsky (United States), Sergey Karjakin (Ukraine), Vladimir Kramnik (Russia), Peter Leko (Hungary), Alexander Morozevich (Russia), Teimour Radjabov (Azerbaijan), Veselin Topalov (Bulgaria) and Wang Yue (China), will be the twelve participants, if only GM Kramnik was there! This tournament starts on March 14, 2009 So another thing to look forward to seeing!