The fantastic battle between Leko and Kasparov in round three of Linares ended in a three-time repetition draw claim by Peter Leko. Surprisingly this apparently surprised Kasparov, who protested to the arbiter. But the arbiter verified the claim and announced the game drawn.
Leko had less than a minute left on his clock and since the penalty for a faulty repetition claim is five minutes, he would have forfeited the game had he been wrong. [As several people have told me, this is no longer true: The facts: You can't lose on time anymore (since 1997 if memory serves me) if you claim a draw incorrectly with less than 5 minutes on the clock. The old penalty of 5 minutes was thought to dissuade unfairly players to make correct draw claims.
The penalties now in the event of an incorrect draw claim are (50 moves or repetition):
Your opponent always gets 3 minutes more. You lose 3 minutes. Unless:
1) you have between 2 and 6 minutes: you lose half your time
2) you have between 1 and 2 minutes: the arbiter leaves you with 1 minute
3) you have less than 1 minute: no further penalty!
Stephen Boyd. International Arbiter, French Chess Federation (formerly Canada)
Thank you, Mr. Boyd!] The repetition occurred on moves 80, 82, 84, and 87. (Yes, that's FOUR, as GM Lubos Kavalek pointed out to me, and as I pointed out during the live commentary but managed to forget!) The position was a dead draw by then anyway. Kasparov had missed a simple mate in 62 back on move 71! Who says he has silicon in his blood? If you think it's easy, try playing that position against Fritz or Junior, especially if you have the Q vs Q+P tablebases installed. One move that's not perfect and it's a draw.
