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It was a snowy and cold day in the Hanseatic city of Hamburg, with about a centimeter of snow falling and sticking overnight — a fairly rare occurrance in a city where the average temperature in February is above freezing.
I must apologize to the Hamburg SK team — yesterday I speculated that for the locals today against the German champions from Baden-Baden there would not be much to write about. How wrong I was; with the 4 : 4 a team point was surprisingly taken off the leaders. Maybe this point for the HSK is a kind of initial spark in the fight for relegation. That would not be too late in the middle of the season. The league remains exciting after this event — above as well as below.
(L to R) Andrey Ostrovski, Lawrence Trent, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Simon Commercon, Emil Powierski Dmitrij Kollars, Niclas Huschenbeth; (Seated) Jonathan Carlstedt and Peter Heine Nielsen | Photo: Macauley Peterson
| 3 | Vachier-Lagrave, Maxime | ½ | : | ½ | Grandelius, Nils | 2 |
| 7 | Adams, Michael | ½ | : | ½ | Svane, Rasmus | 3 |
| 9 | Bacrot, Etienne | ½ | : | ½ | Huschenbeth, Niclas | 4 |
| 10 | Naiditsch, Arkadij | 1 | : | 0 | Hansen, Sune Berg | 7 |
| 11 | Movsesian, Sergei | 0 | : | 1 | Kollars, Dmitrij | 9 |
| 12 | Kasimdzhanov, Rustam | 0 | : | 1 | Heinemann, Thies | 12 |
| 15 | Gustafsson, Jan | 1 | : | 0 | Rogozenco, Dorian | 13 |
| 16 | Nielsen, Peter Heine | ½ | : | ½ | Carlstedt, Jonathan | 14 |
Speaking of "down", there, namely on boards 5 to 8, the Hamburg team "won" even against Baden-Baden — the difference of around 200 Elo points be damned! Thies Heinemann made a nice, precise finish in his game against Rustam Kasimdzhanov after the Uzbek grandmaster did not find the right defense against Heinemann's pawns:
A waiting Game in the Queen's Indian 7...Na6
Let FIDE Senior Trainer and IM Andrew Martin introduce you to the Tiviakov method, where he covers all of 8.b3, 8.Re1, 8.Bf4, 8.Bg5, 8.a3, 8.Qa4 and 8.d5 and all in around an hour!
Dmitrij Kollars also scored a victory for HSK against Sergei Movsesian | Photo: Georgios Souleidis
Against Speyer, the last place Norderstedt team very nearly managed a draw. Benedict Krause, a hero yesterday, fought with black for nearly six hours, but the effort was not enough to turn the tide of his losing ending.
| 1 | Oleksiyenko, Mykhaylo | ½ | : | ½ | Olszewski, Michal | 1 |
| 2 | Neiksans, Arturs | ½ | : | ½ | Trent, Lawrence | 2 |
| 3 | Kantans, Toms | ½ | : | ½ | Ostrovskiy, Andrey | 3 |
| 4 | Meskovs, Nikita | 1 | : | 0 | Kopylov, Michael | 4 |
| 7 | Shytaj, Luca, Dr. | 1 | : | 0 | Krause, Benedict | 5 |
| 8 | Yankelevich, Lev | 1 | : | 0 | Parvanyan, Ashot | 6 |
| 11 | Hoolt, Sarah | 0 | : | 1 | Powierski, Emil | 8 |
| 13 | Commercon, Simon | ½ | : | ½ | Polischuk, Viktor | 10 |
The home club of Norderstedt marks the occassion of the eighth round with a team photo | Macauley Peterson
| 1. | OSG Baden Baden | 8 | 15 | 46½ | 197 |
| 2. | SG Solingen | 8 | 15 | 45 | 198½ |
| 3. | SV Werder Bremen | 8 | 13 | 43 | 203 |
| 4. | SV Hockenheim | 8 | 10 | 38½ | 155½ |
| 5. | SF Deizisau | 8 | 10 | 37½ | 170½ |
| 6. | SK Schwäbisch Hall | 8 | 10 | 36½ | 171 |
| 7. | DJK Aachen | 8 | 10 | 36 | 157½ |
| 8. | USV Dresden | 8 | 9 | 31 | 153½ |
| 9. | Schachfreunde Berlin | 8 | 8 | 31½ | 143 |
| 10. | Speyer-Schwegenheim | 8 | 7 | 28 | 136½ |
| 11. | SV Hofheim | 8 | 6 | 27 | 117 |
| 12. | Hamburger SK | 8 | 4 | 27½ | 106½ |
| 13. | SV Mülheim Nord | 8 | 4 | 25 | 126½ |
| 14. | FC Bayern München | 8 | 4 | 24½ | 112 |
| 15. | MSA Zugzwang | 8 | 3 | 20½ | 89½ |
| 16. | SK Norderstedt | 8 | 0 | 14 | 66½ |
After the clear victory against SV Muelheim Nord, SG Solingen has rejoined OSG Baden-Baden on team points. For the Muelheim squad, the defeat against the favorite, of course, brought no respite in the relegation battle.
| 2 | Harikrishna, Pentala | ½ | : | ½ | Landa, Konstantin | 4 |
| 4 | Ragger, Markus | 1 | : | 0 | Zelbel, Patrick | 8 |
| 5 | Van Wely, Loek | 1 | : | 0 | Hausrath, Daniel | 9 |
| 8 | Bok, Benjamin | 1 | : | 0 | Saltaev, Mihail | 10 |
| 9 | Smeets, Jan | ½ | : | ½ | Vrolijk, Liam | 11 |
| 10 | L'Ami, Erwin | 1 | : | 0 | Dinstuhl, Volkmar, Dr. | 13 |
| 12 | Andersen, Mads | ½ | : | ½ | Rezasade, Amir | 15 |
| 13 | Nikolic, Predrag | 1 | : | 0 | Buckels, Valentin | 17 |
For DJK Aachen there was nothing to be done against third-placed Bremen today. Their great season so far suffered a small kink.
| 3 | Iturrizaga Bonelli, Eduardo | 0 | : | 1 | Areshchenko, Alexander | 1 |
| 4 | van Foreest, Jorden | 0 | : | 1 | Dubov, Daniil | 2 |
| 6 | Parligras, Mircea Emilian | 0 | : | 1 | Fressinet, Laurent | 3 |
| 7 | Bindrich, Falko | 0 | : | 1 | McShane, Luke J | 4 |
| 8 | Nijboer, Friso | 0 | : | 1 | Efimenko, Zahar | 5 |
| 10 | van Foreest, Lucas | 0 | : | 1 | Edouard, Romain | 6 |
| 11 | Zaragatski, Ilja | ½ | : | ½ | Markgraf, Rolf-Alexander | 12 |
| 17 | Donchenko, Alexander | 1 | : | 0 | Zumsande, Martin | 13 |
With a clear victory against Schachfreunde Berlin, SV Hockenheim has established itself as the head of a larger group of teams with 10 points each, which immediately follows the leading three teams.
| 5 | Howell, David W L | 1 | : | 0 | Piorun, Kacper | 1 |
| 7 | Moiseenko, Alexander | ½ | : | ½ | Mista, Aleksander | 4 |
| 8 | Balogh, Csaba | ½ | : | ½ | Tomczak, Jacek | 5 |
| 9 | Wagner, Dennis | 1 | : | 0 | Schneider, Ilja | 7 |
| 11 | Buhmann, Rainer | ½ | : | ½ | Schreiner, Peter | 10 |
| 12 | Baramidze, David | 1 | : | 0 | Abel, Dennes | 12 |
| 13 | Banusz, Tamas | 1 | : | 0 | Seyb, Alexander | 13 |
| 14 | Braun, Arik | ½ | : | ½ | Schmidek, Emil | 14 |
The team of SV Hofheim scored an important draw today — the lead on the relegation zone is thus two points.
| 2 | Schroeder, Jan-Christian | 0 | : | 1 | Eljanov, Pavel | 1 |
| 5 | Ginsburg, Gennadi | 0 | : | 1 | Almasi, Zoltan | 2 |
| 6 | Perske, Thore | ½ | : | ½ | Nisipeanu, Liviu-Dieter | 3 |
| 7 | Lobzhanidze, Davit | 1 | : | 0 | Gajewski, Grzegorz | 4 |
| 8 | Gurevich, Vladimir | ½ | : | ½ | Bartel, Mateusz | 5 |
| 9 | Margolin, Boris | ½ | : | ½ | Vogel, Roven | 9 |
| 11 | Zude, Arno | ½ | : | ½ | Maiwald, Jens-Uwe | 11 |
| 13 | Brendel, Oliver | 1 | : | 0 | Moehn, Hans | 13 |
Unlike in football, both of the two Munich teams in chess remain knee-deep in the relegation battle.
| 5 | Rodshtein, Maxim | ½ | : | ½ | Mons, Leon | 1 |
| 6 | Laznicka, Viktor | ½ | : | ½ | Kindermann, Stefan | 2 |
| 8 | Cornette, Matthieu | 1 | : | 0 | Bromberger, Stefan | 3 |
| 10 | Michalik, Peter | 1 | : | 0 | Hertneck, Gerald | 4 |
| 11 | Le Roux, Jean-Pierre | ½ | : | ½ | Zysk, Robert | 5 |
| 13 | Womacka, Mathias | 1 | : | 0 | Hoffmeyer, Falk | 6 |
| 15 | Zeller, Frank | ½ | : | ½ | Gerigk, Erasmus | 8 |
| 16 | Zpevak, Pavel | ½ | : | ½ | Lammers, Markus | 10 |
| 3 | Bluebaum, Matthias | ½ | : | ½ | Dragnev, Valentin | 1 |
| 4 | Meier, Georg | 1 | : | 0 | Studer, Noel | 2 |
| 8 | Heimann, Andreas | ½ | : | ½ | Johansson, Linus | 5 |
| 9 | Kozul, Zdenko | 0 | : | 1 | Fedorovsky, Michael | 6 |
| 10 | Graf, Alexander | 1 | : | 0 | Lindgren, Philip | 7 |
| 12 | Dautov, Rustem | ½ | : | ½ | Bezold, Michael | 13 |
| 14 | Schlosser, Philipp | ½ | : | ½ | Rafiee, Makan | 15 |
| 15 | Zilka, Stepan | 1 | : | 0 | Unzicker, Ferdinand, Dr. | 16 |
