LEON

A city in Spain which has hosted chess tournaments and matches since 1988. For some time the players could play with the help of computers. The two strongest players can only meet in the final. Four games will be played in every match, with 20 minutes per player plus 10 additional seconds after each move. Tie-breaks will be immediately solved by five minute games. Garry Kasparov said in 1998: “Leon is a symbol of the chess avant-garde”. The central strand of this tournament has always been the innovation, in order to make it attractive to the general public: electronic boards, live Internet broadcast with high quality commentators.

Leon2
Kramnik and Anand playing with the help of a computer

The winners were: 1988 Javier Campos Moreno, 1989 Josef Pinter, 1990 Julio Granda, 1991 Eugeny Vladimirov, 1992 Boris Gulko, 1993 Leonid Yudasin, 1994 Alexander Beljavsky, 1995 Alexei Shirov, 1996 Viswanathan Anand, 1997 Vesselin Topalov, 1998 Gary Kasparov, 1999 Viswanathan Anand, 2000 Viswanathan Anand, 2001 Viswanathan Anand, 2002 Vladimir Kramnik, 2003 Ruslam Ponomariov, 2004 Alexei Shirov, 2005 Viswanathan Anand, 2006 Viswanathan Anand, 2007 Viswanathan Anand, 2008 Vassily Ivanchuk, 2009 Magnus Carlsen, 2010 Boris Gelfand, 2011 Viswanathan Anand.