Top GMs Back to Linares, Playing in the Spanish League

The Spanish Team Championship is under way in Linares, the city that hosted the “Wimbledon of Chess” for many years. Some very strong grandmasters can be found on the top boards, such as Anish Giri, Etienne Bacrot, Vassily Ivanchuk, Pentala Harikrishna and Laurent Fressinet.

Between 1978 and 2010, the famous chess tournament was held in Linares, a city located in the Andalusian province of Jaén, Spain. Due to the international financial crisis and its political consequences, the city cannot spend much money anymore, but the love for chess is still there.

This year, a number of consecutive events are taking place in Linares. For example, last week, Paco Vallejo won the Spanish Individual Championship, and this week the national team championship is under way. In fact it's rather international, with players from 16 federations playing, besides the Spanish players!

Below is the composition of teams in the top section, the división de honor (with only the top six boards shown, full list here):

2014 Spanish Team Championship | Teams

The tournament is a round robin played over seven rounds. Each team consists of six players, but many teams traveled to Linares with more players, obviously. Not all players listed ended up playing in Linares, e.g. Arkadij Naiditsch is currently active in a tournament in Baden-Baden. 

The first round immediately confirmed how strong Mérida Patrimonio de la Humanidad is this year: it defeated another favorite, Gros Xake Taldea, 4.5-1.5. The top two boards (Bacrot-Ivanchuk and Almasi-Van Wely) were drawn, but GM Ferenc Berkes and Yuriy Kryvoruchko scored full points.

The latter refuted a wild attacking idea from Ivan Sokolov:

The team with the prettiest name: Mérida Patrimonio de la Humanidad.

The reiging champion, Sestao Naturgás, started with a 3-3 tie with Mágic, the other team from Mérida. It went all right on the top boards, with Fressinet and Rodshtein beating Oparin and Perez Candelario respectively, but Mágic's boards five and six leveled the score.

Here's the game from Fressinet, the fresh French champion, who continued collecing rating points in his neighbor country. He is on 4.5/5 and #26 in the live ratings now.

In round two, Sestao defeated Equigoma, but only with the smallest possible margin as Anish Giri suffered a loss to Venezuela's number one. 

Round three saw a big upset: three-time Spanish Champion Mágic, the only Spanish team to ever win the European Club Cup, isn't as strong as it used to be, but nonetheless defeated the higher rated Mérida 4-2.

Putting two highly experienced GMs on boards five and six seems like a good idea, but in this match Illescas and Korneev both lost, the latter to a talented FM:

The game on board three in this match was absolutely fantastic. It ended in a draw, but after many adventures! It would take too much time to analyze properly, so just enjoy it as it is:

The next day Sestao lost again, to Mérida, with five draws and the following decisive game:

After five rounds, Mérida is in the lead, but shared with a team that wasn't mentioned yet: Solvay. The team with three Indian GMs has only lost three individual games in the first five rounds (but still has to play Mérida and Sestao).

Here's a win by Harikrishna, who revealed after the game that he had used the March issue of The Master's Bulletin (and especially GM Tamir Nabaty article on “The New Veresov”: 1.d4, 2.Nc3, 3.Bf4!?) to prepare for this game!

2014 Spanish Team Championship | Round 5 Standings

Rk.	Team	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	TB1	TB2
1	C.A. SOLVAY		2			3½	4½	5½	5½	8	21
2	MERIDA PATRIMONIO DE LA HUMANIDAD	4		3½	2	4½			5½	8	19,5
3	SESTAO NATURGAS ENERGIA		2½		3		3½	5½	5	7	19,5
4	CLUB MAGIC EXTREMADURA		4	3		1½		3½	4½	7	16,5
5	GROS XAKE TALDEA	2½	1½		4½		4	4		6	16,5
6	EQUIGOMA - CASA SOCIAL CATOLICA	1½		2½		2		2	3½	2	11,5
7	ESCOLA D'ESCACS DE BARCELONA	½		½	2½	2	4			2	9,5
8	C. E. BARBERA	½	½	1	1½		2½			0	6