The young IM Miguel Illescas kept everyone in suspense, but in the end he achieved the impossible: in the last round, and against the Soviet Artur Yusupov, he secured the indispensable 5½ points needed to obtain the GM title, in one of those lessons that vindicate the saying, “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Illescas pursued it throughout the 6th “City of Linares” Chess Tournament. In the preliminaries, when he admitted that he had come to Linares with the sole intention of playing; after the third round, when the two points he had scored convinced him that it was not so impossible to reach the four points that would preserve his Elo in a category-15 tournament; and, finally, with the decisive 1½ points that brought him within touching distance of the dream of the norm—the Grandmaster title—which the spectators in the playing hall rewarded with cheers and applause.

Illescas and his second, the Spanish IM Javier Ochoa, showed throughout the tournament a rapport that can fairly be described as astonishing and by no means common in these battles. To tell the truth, it became very difficult to distinguish one from the other at meals, on their daily walks, in the meetings before each game, or in the nightly analysis sessions that followed the adjourned games. It was a kind of teamwork that our chess sadly lacks, mired as it is in personal quarrels or neglected by the federation.

The great star of the “City of Linares” was its winner, Jan Timman, who achieved the best percentage score of his career: 8½ points out of a possible 11. Had his defeat to Chandler in the ninth round not occurred, his performance could well have been described as the best ever recorded in the history of this game. This, naturally, with due respect to the American Fischer, to whom Timman was constantly compared and whose memory hovered in the air like a veiled threat to Soviet supremacy. “Because Timman here is like Fischer in his day. The easy thing was to know who would win the tournament; the question was guessing how many points Fischer would score more than the runner-up,” Ljubomir Ljubojevic declared.

A more intense duel had been expected between the Dutchman and Alexander Beliavsky, who in the end finished second. Unable to keep pace with Timman, who in the first seven rounds amassed a chilling 6½ points, Beliavsky nonetheless more than proved his class.

Luck did not accompany the three bottom finishers: the Icelander Hjartarsson, the Yugoslav Nikolic, and the women’s world champion Maia Chiburdanidze. Hjartarsson, arriving with the aura of having defeated Viktor Korchnoi in Saint John, produced a mediocre tournament, far below what had been expected of him. Nikolic, for his part, will always remember Linares as a tournament he entered ranked sixth on the Elo list and left with 35 points fewer.

Maia Chiburdanidze of the Soviet Union deserves separate comment. With the memory of her appearance in Bilbao still fresh, she ended up finishing last in the standings, with 2½ points (+1 -8 =3). In Maia’s defense, it must be said that she played under considerable outside pressure; pressure that turned each of her games into a kind of demonstration for women’s rights in a game presumed to be exclusively male. Even in her own country, the USSR, the news that Maia was Karpov’s substitute in this tournament was poorly received, and that controversy continued among some of the participants in Linares when they received the same news.

To conclude this chronicle, let us repeat the announcement made by the mayor of Linares, Alfredo Catalán, at the closing ceremony: with this edition, the prestigious “City of Linares” becomes an annual event, instead of being held every two years as it had been until now. Meanwhile, Luis Rentero, the driving force behind it all, was rubbing his hands for two reasons: he had achieved his dream (that the “City of Linares” would become an annual event), and he already knew of Bilbao’s decision to give up organizing one of the World Cup events. All that remains is for new competitors to emerge. After all, Rentero wants exclusivity.