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:
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 |
