History
The event, sponsored by Spanish businessman Luis Rentero, was first held in 1978. At that time it was not an elite event and was won by the relatively unknown Swede, Jaan Eslon (on tie-break from the Argentine Roberto Debarnot). After the following year's event, it was held every other year until 1987 when no tournament took place: that being the year that Linares hosted the Candidates' Final, a match to determine a challenger for Kasparov's world title featuring Anatoly Karpov and Andrei Sokolov. The postponed 1987 event was held over until 1988 and the tournament has since become an annual event, with the exception of 1996, when the Women's World Chess Championship was held.
Rentero is notorious for being a strong opponent of short draws in chess, to the point that in 1991 he offered cash bonuses for playing longer games.
The 1994 tournament had an average Elo rating of 2685, the highest ever at that time, making it the first Category XVIII tournament ever held. The field, in eventual finishing order, consisted of Karpov, Kasparov, Shirov, Bareev, Kramnik, Lautier, Anand, Kamsky, Topalov, Ivanchuk, Gelfand, Illescas, Judit Polgár, and Beliavsky. Karpov won with an undefeated 11/13. Jeff Sonas considers Karpov's performance the best tournament result in history.
The 1994 tournament was also noted for an incident in which Garry Kasparov "took a move back" against Judit Polgár. Kasparov's fingers briefly released a knight before he realized the move was a blunder; he then moved the knight to a different square. Polgar (17 years old at the time) did not protest and the arbiter did not intervene. Kasparov went on to win the game.
In 1998, the format of the tournament changed from a single round-robin tournament to a double round-robin event (meaning that each participant plays every other participant twice, once with each color).
Garry Kasparov announced his retirement from chess after the 2005 tournament.
From 2006 through 2008, the first half of the tournament took place in the Mexican city of Morelia. The second half took place in Linares. Consequently the event is sometimes referred to as Morelia - Linares in databases and the like.
In 2009 and 2010 the event took place entirely in Linares.
The Linares tournament of 2011 was cancelled, for reasons including general economic problems; the tournament was also cancelled in 2012.
Read more about this topic: Linares International Chess Tournament
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