Linares: Anand, Aronian and Grischuk win

Three decisive games meant a great fourth round in Linares on Sunday. Anand beautifully outplayed Wang Yue in an ending while Grischuk survided early pressure built up by Radjabov and then won in the ending. Aronian became the last winner of the day after he converted an endgame with an extra pawn against Dominguez at move 92.

From February 18 till March 8 the 26th Torneo Internacional de Ajedrez Ciudad de Linares takes place. There is no starting fee for the players this time; the prize fund is € 314,000. The winner takes € 100,000, the second place is € 75,000 and the third player earns € 50,000.

Round 4 Just like at Corus, Carlsen is in a peaceful mood and has started the tournament with four draws. In another 4.Qb3 Gr?ºnfeld (Topalov played it against Kamsky earlier this week) Ivanchuk tried the ancient 5...Be6 and was quite successful: he soon had solved his opening problems.

It was 1.d4 again for Anand and perhaps at some point we should stop signalling it! But still, it's interesting to see what the Indian has up his sleeve against all those Black options. Against Wang Yue's Chebanenko Slav he went for 5.a4 and then followed up with a king's bishop fianchetto. It looks like the Chinese quickly chose the wrong plan (...Rb8 and ...b5) because it allowed the star move 21.Bc6! with which the World Champion started to dominate the board completely.

The Queen's Indian in Radjabov-Grischuk looked very familiar, but this version was a bit different. White built up a nice position but then threw it all away with 18.e5, which must have been a tactical oversight. In his opponent's timetrouble, Radjabov played some more inaccuracies and lost several pawns, and then the game.

Aronian showed that the 7.dxc5 line of the Queen's Gambit Accepted has more venom than you would think. It's all about accurate manoeuvering and without running any risks, it's no surprise that the line has been appreciated by many top GMs over the years. Black does best not to play ...b5 too early because it has proven to be too much of a weakness, as I once wrote in a Survey for New in Chess Yearbook way back. Perhaps 12...a5 weakens too much as well, not sure about that, but as soon as White could destroy Black's pawn structure he was way on top. Dominguez fought like a lion, for hours and hours, but it was in vain.

Monday is a rest day in Linares.



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Links:

• Round 1 report
• Round 2 report
• Round 3 report
• Official website
• Games in PGN