45th Sparkassen Dortmund: Bluebaum and Wojtaszek lead

The 45th Dortmund Sparkassen tournament is being held in Dortmund, Germany, from July 15-23, 2017, bringing together a fascinating and eclectic group of players: Vladimir Kramnik, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave (winner in 2016), Vladimir Fedoseev (qualified by winning the Aeroflot Open), Radoslaw Wojtaszek, Dmitry Andreikin, Wang Yue, and locals Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu and Matthias Bluebaum.

They play seven rounds at the time control of 40 moves in 100 minutes, followed by 20 moves in 50 minutes, and finally 15 moves for the rest of the game, with a 30-second increment as of move one.

Round two

All photos by Georgios Souleidis

There is an expression in Brazil, “não se pode elogiar”, which translates to “You cannot compliment them”. It means that after congratulations and kudos, more often than not, the person will do something stupid, usually due to an unhealthy dose of overconfidence. One gets the impression that this is what happened in round two, when Vladimir Fedoseev, already quite flamboyant, had still not come down to earth after his epic win against Kramnik, and paid the price for it.

The stage with players and giant displays

In round two he faced the local hero Matthias Bluebaum, a young but ambitious German grandmaster, and played a Semi-Slav quite a bit too optimistically, with curious moves that did nothing to help him complete his development.

Matthias Bluebaum 1 - 0 Vladimir Fedoseev (annotated by GM Elshan Moradiabadi)

The Slav and Semi-Slav revisited

For Shirov the Slav and the Semi-Slav form one huge and common opening. Of course it is a mighty opening complex and the DVD cannot give a complete picture of it, but in the areas he chooses to highlight our author is an absolute expert and capable of giving the deepest possible insights into the secrets of this extremely solid opening.

The games between Andreikin and Kramnik and Nisipeanu against Vachier-Lagrave were quite uneventful and led to quiet draws. However, there was one more important game relative to the standings: Radoslaw Wojtaszek vs. Wang Yue. Their battle was much less linear in its development, as Wang Yue, playing black, was the first to obtain a significant advantage in a fairly normal Nimzo-Indian.

In a classic line, Wojtaszek opted for a line that avoided an isolani, and instead preferred to play for a queenside majority with 10.c5. An imprecision on his part got him into trouble as Black invaded on the a-file, but the favor was soon returned as the Chinese player missed his best chance with 14…Ra5! instead playing 14…Ra7.

Radoslaw Wojtaszek - Wang Yue

Radoslaw Wojtaszek scored an early win and is now joint leader with Matthias Bluebaum

It might seem early to talk about leaders with just two rounds played, but Dortmund is a seven round event, and as a result there is little room for long comebacks. Wojtaszek and Bluebaum lead with 1.5/2, but readers will have noticed that one player on 1.0/2 behind two of the three decisive games played so far.

Standings after two rounds

(click on crosstable for full size)

Links

• Official tournament site
• All games in PGN or Replay them directly here (many analyzed)

You can use ChessBase 14 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs to replay the games in PGN. You can also download our free Playchess client, which will in addition give you immediate access to the chess server Playchess.com.