Former World champion Viswanathan Anand will start his campaign with white pieces against Grandmaster Peter Leko of Hungary in the Dortmund Sparkassen chess championship, which gets underway in Dortmund, Germany, on Thursday.
Anand has more than a few things to prove at this Dortmund meeting following his performance in the 2001 edition, which saw him end up a forgettable last in a field of six.
The Indian ace skipped last year's edition as it was a qualification tournament for playing Grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik of Russia as part of the reunification treaty of the chess world, signed during the Eurotel Trophy at Prague, the Czech Republic, last May.
A winner of this event in 1996 and 2000, Anand is expected to give his best shot this time around, especially against Leko, as the latter beat him in their last classical encounter at the Linares tournament earlier this year.
Barring that loss which resulted in a joint third place for the Indian, Anand has nearly ruled this year with a winning performance in the Corus tournament at Wijk Ann Zee in the Netherlands and a sterling show at the Amber Blindfold and rapid chess in Monte Carlo. The Indian wizard also won the SIS Masters tournament in Denmark with an enviable score of 5.5 points out of a possible 6.
Dortmund will be another ball game as it will be played under Classical time control. This will be Anand's third event of this year in this format, after Corus and Linares, and the pressure will be on him to emerge triumphant in a field of six.
The line-up of this year's event is quite interesting. There is a truth-seeker in Kramnik, a violent player in Peter Leko, a fighter in Viktor Bologan of Moldova, arguably a future World champion in Teimour Radjabov and Arkadi Naiditsch, touted as one of the best ever German talent.
Whether they will prove good enough for the authenticity, guile, and perfection of Anand will be known only when the tournament starts.
The contestants will play two games each, one with white and one with black, in the double round-robin tournament that will be spread over ten rounds. The only rest day is exactly at the half-way stage on August 5.
Seeded second here, Anand's main challengers will obviously be top seed Kramnik and third seed Leko. The gap in ratings of Kramnik and Anand is a mere 11 points with the former standing at 2785 points in the latest FIDE list.
Leko is a not-so-distant fourth in the list topped by Kasparov (2830), having moved to 2739.
However, the consistent rise in the game of Radjabov could be a cause for concern for the three members of the elite 2700 ELO group. Baku-born Radjabov is already a force to reckon with, having already beaten Kasparov in Linares.
In fact, the teenaged sensation, youngest here, has recorded some very fine victories over higher rated opponents and on his day his venom could be lethal.
Bologan qualified here by virtue of winning the Aeroflot Championship earlier this year and will be the marked one for attack along with Naiditsch who is relatively inexperienced.
Pairings:
Round 1: V Anand v/s Peter Leko (Hun); Vladimir Kramnik (Rus) v/s Teimour Radjabov (Aze); Arkadi Naiditsch (Ger) v/s Viktor Bologan (Mda).
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