Dortmund Rd9 – Kramnik wins Dortmund; Nakamura ends drought

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 with 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.

Round nine

Nakamura could not be blamed for lack of trying, and finally won

The winner of Wijk Aan Zee heaved a sigh of relief as he finally posted a win on the crosstable, in this case against Meier. Nakamura may have been out of shape, as was evident in his games, but no one could fault his willingness to play his games to the end, a trademark of his. While it might sometimes seem to be taken to unusual extremes, better this than a slew of quick draws.

Giri and Kramnik played a relatively short game that ended in a peaceful result. One can hardly fault either player since for Giri this was a welcome result of course, while Kramnik had a big scare the day before, and decided to lock his superb result once and for all before embarking on the last round. With it, his unassailable two point lead with 7.0/9 has to be considered one of the greatest results of his career, and well deserved.

Ponomariov and Le Quang played a good game that ended in a draw.

Pictures by Georgios Souleidis

Standings after nine rounds

Schedule and results

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 11 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.

Previous reports

• ChessBase reports on Dortmund 2010
• ChessBase reports on Dortmund 2009
• ChessBase reports on Dortmund 2008
• ChessBase reports on Dortmund 2007
• ChessBase reports on Dortmund 2006
• ChessBase reports on Dortmund 2005
• ChessBase reports on Dortmund 2004
• ChessBase reports on Dortmund 2003

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