Viswanathan Anand wins León for the seventh time

by ChessBase
7/8/2007 – The Magistral Ciudad de León tournament has been held since 1988, in differents formats. In the 20th edition it was once again the Indian superstar Vishy Anand who was victorious, beating Bulgaria's Veselin Topalov convincingly with a 3:1 score in the final on Sunday. It was Anand's third consecutive win, and his seventh overall in León. Now with new pictures pictures.

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XX Magistral Ciudad de León

The two semi-finals were played on Friday and Saturday July 6 and 7, with the two winners playing the final on Sunday July 8th. The semi-finals and final consisted in four games each. All games were played at a rate of 20 minutes for the whole game, with an increment of ten seconds after each move.

Final: Anand defeats Topalov to win León 2007

The first game of the Final was a Closed Ruy Lopez in which Topalov, with white, launched a vicious-looking kingside attack, which was coolly rebuffed by Anand, who forced a draw in 49 moves.

In the second game, a Sicilian Najdorf, Anand slowly outplayed his opponent, queened a pawn on b8 and took the full point on move 37.

This left Anand a point ahead of Topalov, who launched another Closed Ruy with kingside aggressions in game three. But once again Anand allowed nothing really dangerous to happen and the game was drawn in 38 moves.

With the score at 2:1 Topalov desperately needed to win the next game, with the black pieces. He played a Sicilian Scheveningen with the sharpest possible lines.

Anand,V (2786) - Topalov,V (2772) [B90]
XX Ciudad de Leon Leon ESP (2.4), 08.07.2007
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be3 e6 7.Be2 Nbd7 8.0-0 b5 9.a4 b4 10.Nc6 Qc7 11.Nxb4 d5 12.Nxa6 Bxa6 13.exd5 Bd6 14.h3 exd5 15.Nxd5 Nxd5 16.Qxd5 Bb7 17.Qc4 Bc6 18.b4 Qb7 19.Rad1 Be7

20.b5! Bxg2 21.Rxd7 Kxd7 22.Qg4+ Ke8 23.Qxg2 Qxg2+ 24.Kxg2 Rxa4 25.b6 Ra5 26.Rd1 Bg5 27.b7 Ke7 28.Bb6 Re5 29.Bd8+ 1-0.


Final position of the fourth game


The Deputy Mayor of León, Ibán García del Blanco, plays the first move for Topalov, chief organiser Marcelino Sion looks on


The first game under way


Anand and Topalov in a press conference with GM Zenon Franco Ocampo after the match


Veselin Topalov speaks to the press and visitors


Seven time winner Vishy Anand

So Anand won the 20th edition of the Cuidad de León tournament. This was the course of the 2007 tournament:

In the past the tournament was played in different modes – including a phase, from 1998 to 2002, when it was held as an "Advanced Chess" event with the players using computers during the games. According to our records Anand has won the event seven times. That's more than Borg or Federer were able to achieve in Wimbledon. Roger Federer beat Rafael Nadal in the final in London just as Anand was clinching his match against Topalov in León.

 1 1988 Javier Campos Moreno Chile
 2 1989 Josef Pinter Hungary
 3 1990 Julio Granda Peru
 4 1991 Eugeny Vladimirov Russia
 5 1992 Boris Gulko USA
 6 1993 Leonid Yudasin Israel
 7 1994 Alexander Beljavsky Ukraine
 8 1995 Alexei Shirov Latvia
 9 1996 Viswanathan Anand India
10 1997 Vesselin Topalov Bulgaria
11 1998 Gary Kasparov Russia
12 1999 Viswanathan Anand India
13 2000 Viswanathan Anand India
14 2001 Viswanathan Anand India
15 2002 Vladimir Kramnik Russia
16 2003 Ruslam Ponomariov Ukraine
17 2004 Alexei Shirov Latvia
18 2005 Viswanathan Anand India
19 2006 Viswanathan Anand India
20 2007 Viswanathan Anand India

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