Archive for March 7th, 2009

All four games of the last round were drawn, leaving two players at the top of the final table: Vassily Ivanchuk, who first won Linares 18 years ago, and Russian GM Alexander Grischuk. Both have plus two (8.0/14), but Grischuk has three wins to Ivanchuk’s two. Third is Magnus Carlsen, fourth World Champion Vishy Anand. Pictorial report.

Between the rounds of the Super-GM in Linares there are free days. The evening before a break is a great time to take dinner with even the most intense players; and on the free day itself there are usually outings and social gatherings for the journalists. Here’s what we did on the last free day, together with pictures of pretty girls and some more-or-less harrowing tales around the tournament.

The Search mask in both ChessBase and Fritz is a handy and versatile tool for locating games in a database. In the new ChessBase Workshop we examine using the Search mask to find deleted games, games which start from non-standard positions, and those containing critical position annotations. Learn more in the new Workshop.