Exactly one week after the conclusion of the Eighth Amber Rapid and Blindfold tournament, Vishwanathan Anand and company are back, donning battle gear again. The venue is Dos Hermanans, Spain and the tournament runs from April 5th to 18th.

This will be the fourth chess Supertournament to be held this calendar year, following Hoogevens, Linares and Amber. Dos Hermanas hosted great super-tournaments in 1996 and 1997 and is back this year. The tournament was not held in 1998.

Anand and Russia's Vladmir Kramnik shared joint top honours in this tournament in 1997. In the very last round of that tournament, Anand managed to score a "must-win" point over Hungary's Judith Polgar, to end up joint first.

The invitations to play in Dos Hermanas go out only to the very best. A total of ten players will be competing this year. This means that everyone will face nine opponents, which makes it a shorter tournament compared to Linares and Hoogevens. This format could favour Anand, who typically gets off to fast leads.

In addition to Anand, the other grandmasters competing in Dos Hermanas are Vladmir Kramnik, Anatoly Karpov, Vaselin Topalov, Peter Svidler, Judith Polgar, Alexandar Morozevich, Victor Korchnoi, Michael Adams and Miguel Illescas.

The 21 year-old Russian, Alexandar Morozevich blazed into the world number five spot earlier this year. Morozevich is known for his risky and unique play and this will be his first real test of playing in the stratosphere of chess grandmaster community. Morozevich would have to perform credibly against Anand and Kramnik to prove that he belongs to the same club.

The highest rated woman in the world, Judith Polgar, comes back to active tournament play after a hiatus that lasted well over a year. The question that begs to be asked is whether she will be ready to take on the best of the best? This is especially relevant considering that Anand and a few others have been battling it out all year and are in great shipshape form.

The Anand-Karpov encounter will also be of particular interest. This could be a preview of the FIDE knock out finals, to be held later this year in Las Vegas.

Anand and Kramnik have been head to head this year, both playing in the same tournaments with comparable results. Kramnik gave a spectacular performance in last week's Amber tournament. With his cautious play, he has been undefeated for well over thirty regular games, a streak that is discussed a lot in chess circles. Since both players are favourites to win the tournament, it might all come down to their head-to-head encounter.

One notable absence from this super tournament is that of Garry Kasparov. As is well known, Kasparov and Karpov do not play in the same tournament. Kasparov was in fantastic form this year and Anand took second place behind Garry in both Linares and Hoogevens this year.

With Kasparov absent in Dos Hermanas, the chess following public is divided equally between choosing Anand and Kramnik as the candidate for the top spot in Dos Hermanas '99. But they unanimously agree that we are all in for two weeks of great chess.

Ram Prasad

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