19 February,2009 04:12 PM IST | | PTI
Rejuvenated after a four-month break, defending champion Viswanathan Anand will be back in competitive chess when he locks horn with Teimour Radjabov of Azerbaijan in the first round of 22nd Magistral Ciudad De Linares tournament that got underway here.
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| Chess ace Viswanathan Anandu00a0 |
The eight-player double round robin will see Anand in action after a gap of nearly four months as the king of chess was on a well-deserved break after beating Vladimir Kramnik of Russia in the World Championship at Bonn in Germany last October.
A three-time winner here, top seed Anand will set out to defend the title and bring home the winner's cheque of Euro 100000. As always, there will stiff competition in the traditional tournament and Anand's main rival could be either Levon Aronian of Armenia or Magnus Carlsen of Norway.
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The other players in the fray are Vassily Ivanchuk of Ukraine, Alexander Grischuk of Russia and debutants Wang Yue of China and Cuban Lenier Dominiguez.
Players will take on each other twice with both white and black and there will be 14 rounds in all spread over 17 days with three rest days thrown in by the organisers.
