Dortmund Rd1 – Kramnik strikes in first round

From Thursday July 21 to Sunday July 31, 2010 the 39th edition annual Sparkassen Chess-Meeting is taking place in Dortmund, Germany. It is a six-player round robin, in which each player has to play two games against each of the others, one as White and one as Black. Draw offers are not allowed – a game can only be declared a draw, by the arbiter, if there is no possible win for one side, or if a position is repeated three times. The winner of the tournament will be determined after ten rounds.

Games start at 15:00h = 3 p.m. local time (CEST, = 17:00 Moscow, 14:00 p.m. London, 9:00 a.m. New York). All games will be broadcast by the official web site's "Live Games" page and on the Playchess.com server. As in the previous year the moves of the Sparkassen Chess-Meeting will be transmitted on the Internet with a delay of 15 minutes – which means that the moves stay in the playing hall for that period, before they are broadcast to the rest of the world. This is an important anti-cheating measure that has been proposed to FIDE since October 2005 and has the support of most of the top players. We commend the Dortmund organisers for taking the initiative.

Participants

Round one

One can only commisserate with the chess fans, who suddenly find themselves with so much elite chess at the same time that they hardly know where to focus their attention. Now, concurrently with the World Team Championship in Ningbo, and the Biel International, we are also treated to the unmissable Dortmund, celebrating its 39th edition(!) and bringing an exciting roster of players. Alongside Valdimir Kramnik, who has celebrated so many victories here, there is American-on-the-rise Nakamura, a rejuvenated Ponomariov, who not only won the event in 2010, but is also in one of the best phases of his chess career. Qualifying for a second straight time, is the only two straight time winner of the Aeroflot Open, Quang Liem Le, also the first Vietnamese player to break the 2700 barrier, followed by 17-year-old Anish Giri also recently inducted into that elite status, and finally Georg Meier, a top German GM, afforded a chance to sharpen his claws and gain experience at this level.

In their first game of the tournament, Giri and Nakamura played a Queens Gambit declined, however this was nothing like the Valium being served at the recent Candidates. Not that you would expect it considering the players involved, but it is certainly worth reiterating, as their game was complex, sharp, and tense. Despite Nakamura's attempts to confuse and overpower his young adversary, he actually got himself into serious trouble, and things might gave gone very bad had Giri seized a few of the opportunities that came his way. A game well worth seeing.