Anand seeded No 2
for Linares chess

Former World champion Vishwanathan Anand has something to prove in the Linares Super Grandmasters chess tournament which starts on Saturday.

The 12th since its inception in 1990, the tournament features the cream of world chess, barring Braingames champion Vladimir Kramnik, who is a non starter.

Anand starts as the second seed in Kramnik's absence and will be aiming to regain the lost kingdom after a rather rare and unsuccessful stint in the World Championships.

The Indian GM was eliminated in the semi-finals of the championship and should be keen to take on his conquerer, Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine, in the two games that he will play against him.

Gary Kasparov of Russia, the world's highest rated player, is the favourite and will be looking forward to add another feather to his cap.

Kasparov has won this event on six occasions in the past and was once a joint winner along with Kramnik.

The tournament will be played on an all-play-all basis, with the seven participants playing each other twice with alternate colours in the 14 rounds.

February 27 and March 5 have been declared as rest days in the fortnight-long tournament.

The cynosure of all eyes will be youngest ever World champion GM Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine, who is playing a high category tournament for the first time.

Though many attribute Ponomariov's victory in the World Championship to the knock-out format and reduced time control, the Ukrainian prodigy will certainly look to prove that his victory was no flash in the pan.

Another contender for the top honours is Ponomariov's compatriot Vassily Ivanchuk. Ivanchuk's chess talent, his great erudition in all stages of the game and his imagination are well known but he has a fare share of idiosyncracies that let him down at crucial moments.

Some chess pundits believe that he should have beaten Ponomariov in the finals of the World Championship given the kind of middlegame positions he had got, but then he kept blundering and might not get a second chance to have a go at the coveted title.

Latvian born Spaniard Alexei Shirov, a player to watch out for, has heavy minus scores against both Anand and Kasparov and that might not make him a real contender for the crown. But in his last encounter with Anand in Linares, Shirov was the winner and would certainly like to repeat his feat.

Briton Michael Adams is a steady performer and is not likely to come up with many surprises but 19-year-old local hope Francisco Vallejo Pons might strike it big.

Pons, the most lowly rated player in the tournament with 2630 ELO rating points, is growing from strength to strength and will leave no stones unturned to make a mark among the elite group of players.