Hoogeveen: Kramnik wins by 1½ points, rejoins the 2800 club

15th Unive Tournament 2011 in Hoogeveen, Netherlands

The double round robin Crown Group had four players: Vladimir Kramnik, Anish Giri, Maxime Vachier Lagrave and Judit Polgar, with an average rating of 2732, making this a Category 20 event. The time controls were 90 minutes for the first 40 moves, then 30 minutes to finish the game, with 30 seconds increment from move one. There were also side tournaments: the Unive Open is a nine-round Swiss with around 90 players with a minimum rating of 2000. It had a prize fund of €7,500, with a first prize of €3,000. The Amateur Tournament was in two groups: a Morning and an Afternoon Group, each with a maximum of 84 players. The first prize for both groups was €250.

Round five

Young Dutch GM Anish Giri played an interesting novelty in a Symmetrical English (incidentally, have you noticed that the advert below the chess board on our JavaScript player points to context relevant products from our shop?). The strongest female player ever to grace the planet, Judit Polgar, defended tenaciously and seemed to have a draw in her handbag. But then she committed a terrible inaccuracy one move before the time control and compounded it with a further mistake on the final move of the first period. After that Anish had no trouble taking home his first (and naturally only) full point in this event.

Note that in the JavaSript player below we have included the evaluations provided by "Let's Check" users while the games were in progress. Let's Check is the elephant in the living room of our new Fritz 13 program. The values, calculated by the strongest chess engines on the most powerful machines, appear as an evaluation graph below the chess board and give you a very nice overview of how the game progressed (you can click on the graph to jump to the relavent position). For people who have switch off JavaScript and cannot see the games the annotated versions are in our PGN download at the bottom of the page.

On his 21st birthday – imagine, he will now be able to order a beer in the US! – Maxime played a mysterious exchange sacrifice on move 26, but solved the problem after inaccuracies by Vladmir Kramnik, and seemd to be headed for a clean birthday draw. However, after twenty minutes of good defending the French GM cracked and Kramnik picked up a stray pawn. After that is was all "a matter of technique" for the former World Champion.

On the final day both games were drawn, which produced the following table:

Note that with his plus three score Kramnik has gained eight points in this event. On the Live Chess Ratings, calculated by Artiom Tsepotan and Dr. Christopher Wright on 23 October 2011, 00:31 GMT, he has reached a significant mark:

Naturally these are not the official FIDE ratings, but they indicate that Kramnik has once again joined the 2800 club (2799.6 is rounded up to 2800). So now there are four players in that stratospheric group – and all four are playing in the London Chess Classic in just over a month from now!

All results

The Unive Open Tournament

This was won by veteran Sergey Tiviakov and the two young Dutch talents Robin van Kampen and Sipke Ernst.

Of great interest was the result of GM Illya Nyzhnyk, who scored 6.5/9 points with
a performance of 2615. Illya, you should know, turned 15 less than a month ago.

Another super talent, IM Sahaj Grover from New Delhi, India, also scored 6.5/9 points
with a 2574 performance. Sahraj is sixteen. His current rating is 2514.

The "beauty award" went to Geon Knol (above) for his seventh round game against Thomas Beerdsen. You should play through the moves, especially starting from move 34. The evaluations were generated by Fritz 13.

For her "convincing win against Sipke Ernst and an interesting attack against Bram Klapwijk" the organisers awarded Arlette van Weersel an "honorary Beauty Prize". We, on the other hand, think she beat Geon Knol hands down.

Pictures by the official web site.

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN: Crown Group + Open 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.

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