Vishy Anand took first place at this powerful Spanish rapid event on tiebreaks ahead of I.Sokolov, Ponomariov, and Korneev. All scored 7.5/9. Names like van Wely, Dreev, and Vallejo didn't make the podium. Yugoslav legend Ljubo Ljubojevic – long since retired to Spain – participated. He's been lured out of retirement once or twice for Dutch team events in the past few years but it's a shame the Villarobledo game file includes only his loss to Vallejo. An old blitz acquaintance of mine from Buenos Aires, Javier Moreno, gave a strong showing but lost to Korneev in the final round. I see he got his GM title not too long ago. Many Argentine players move to Spain (or Italy) since the opportunities to face strong opposition and to get titles are thin at home. (Not to mention making a living at it.)
This was Anand's fourth victory at this tournament, which used to be a regular but has been on hiatus for three years. Anand won 3,000 euros and his weight in wine. This Spanish news page has a classic photograph of him being weighed against the cases of wine. Last I checked Anand didn't drink but I'm betting he won't have much trouble unloading that vino tinto with Ivan Sokolov around. Anand confessed that he was lost in round six against San Segundo, but he held on and then found a great shot (51..Nxf3!) to equalize when White went astray and then even went on to win.
Ljubo Ljubojevic - certainly an interesting character. Did Lubo pick up the nickname "Jadoubevic" for a bit of sharp practice, or was that someone else? Any memory refreshers out there?
I think it was Matulovic.
Pompano is right.
Ljubojevic has competed in the preliminaries and finals of the Dutch club competition for the past decade at least.
Ljubo will play a team match at the NH Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky Amsterdam - August 19 - 29. It will be Veterans against Youngsters. The other Veterans on his team are Ulf Andersson, John Nunn, and Artur Jussupow. The Youngsters are Magnus Carlsen, Sergey Karjakin, Daniel Stellwagen, and Hao Wang.
Ljubo won the Villarrobledo tournament at least once, but I've forgotten the year. The official site doesn't seem to have a list of past winners.
Inky -
You're missing one player on each team. Also representing the Old Farts will be Alexander Beliavsky, and for the Whippersnappers there's Jan Smeets in addition to those you listed.
My source is this page: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=52948&kpage=290
clyde,
Thank you very much for the update on the players in the NH Chess Tournament. I couldn't connect to the link you gave, but in a later post Mig has supplied us with the Official website. http://nhchess.quinsy.net/
Moreno Carnero impressed me quite a bit looking at the pgn file from TWIC. Beating Van Wely, Dreev, Ponomariov, even in a rapid event is not something to overlook. I liked the Qh7+! (ouch) against Van Wely the most.
I enjoy the 2000s vs 2600-2700 games the most in these tournaments. Its much enjoyable than seeing a 1400 vs 2000 upset. Many of these games were competitive despite the +600 rating difference. Seeing these games I'm thinking that I might pull one or two out of 50 games against Anand, of course in rapid games. I'm low expert.