Viswanathan Anand, seeking his third consecutive and overall seventh title here, will start as the favourite at the Leon Chess tournament to be played among an elite field of all former World Champions from Saturday.
Anand, who has once claimed hat-trick by winning in 1999, 2000 and 2001, would be keen to prove his supremacy over other former world champions Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria, Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine and Rustam Kasimdzhanov of Uzbekistan ahead of the upcoming World Championships.
Anand would be contesting for his seventh title in the prestigious event. The three-day event will be held in knock-out format involving just four participants. The event will start off with the semi-final matches, comprising four games each. The final will also be a four-game match. The tournament will also have the shorter version of the game in which each player will have 20 minutes thinking time for the entire game, with an increment of 10 seconds per move played.
If there is a tie in the four-game match, the winner will be decided by blitz games with each player having 5 minutes for the entire game. Anand, who excels at quicker time controls, will relish the format. The other participants too are quite adept at the quicker form of the game and Anand cannot expect an easy time.
Topalov, who lost the finals here to Anand last year, will be keen to avenge that defeat. But the Bulgarian has not been performing at his best recently. He has been having a lean run starting with the loss of the World Championship to Russian Grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik.
As a result he has had to concede the top position in the World rating list to the Indian superstar. Topalov will be hoping to turn the tide here and rise to the heights he was at a year ago.
Ponomariov won this event in 2003, his first appearance in the tournament. It was the same year when he sensationally won the world chess champion’s crown at the very young age of 16. He has not been able to match that level of success in the following years, but at 20 he is young and constantly improving.
Kasimdzhanov, the 27-year-old Uzbek Grandmaster who won the world chess championship in 2004, is a feared tactician and always a very dangerous opponent. He came close to beating Anand in the finals here in 2005.
With four stars of such magnitude competing here for the title, the event is certain to be a very exciting one. The competitors are all known to be great fighters and the quick time control will add to the excitement.