Dortmund R3 – three sensational games

Round three report

Before we come to the games and the TV ChessBase coverage we would like to draw your attention to a remarkable fact: the number of games drawn in this tournament so far has been five, which amounts to just 33 percent of all the games. How many exclamation points does that deserve? 60% of all games were won by White, and 7% (one game, today) by Black. We refrain from drawing any sweeping early conclusions, but if this continues we will be forced to do so. Comparisons with last year's tournament and with the no-draws-allowed experiment two months ago in Sofia are just waiting to be drawn.

Nielsen vs Sutovsky: This was quite hard-fought, with the Danish GM trying to nurse an extra pawn to victory. But Emil Sutovsky defended imaginatively and the game was drawn. You may want to take a look at the position after Black's 52nd move and speculate what drove the two GMs to continue for four more moves.

Bacrot vs Svidler saw a lot of manoeuvring and some to-and-froing, with first White doing well and then Black taking the initiative. It ended in a draw after 38 moves.

How to bridge 150 Elo points: Naiditsch vs Leko

Naiditsch vs Leko was the big sensation of round three. The young Dortmunder simply outplayed the world championship challenger who is 150 points higher than him on the rating scale. The game lasted 59 moves and was one of the best Naiditsch efforts we have seen in a long time.

Summit meeting: Vladimir Kramnik vs Veselin Topalov

Kramnik,V (2744) - Topalov,V (2788) [E06]
It Dortmund GER (3), 10.07.2005
1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.g3 Bb4+ 5.Bd2 Be7 6.Bg2 0-0 7.0-0 c6 8.Bf4 b6 9.Nc3 Ba6 10.cxd5 cxd5 11.Rc1 Nc6 12.Nxd5 Qxd5 13.Ne5

13...Nxd4 14.Bxd5 Nxe2+ 15.Qxe2. The point of the queen sacrifice on move 13 is that for instance after 15.Kh1 Nxd5 16.Rc2 Nexf4 17.gxf4 Bxf1 18.Qxf1 Nxf4 Black has a rook, bishop and two pawns for the queen, and is doing fine. 15...Bxe2 16.Bxa8 Rxa8 17.Rfe1 Bb5. Black has a pawn for the exchange, and it is unclear whether there is enough compensation for that. 18.Rc2 Nd5 19.Rec1.

We have the exact position we saw a little less than two months ago in Ponomariov-Topalov at the Mtel Masters in Sofia. There Topalov had lost horribly after 19...Bc5 20.Bd2 f6 21.b4 Bf8 22.Ng4 Rd8 23.Rc8 Rd7 24.Nh6+ gxh6 25.Bxh6 Rf7 26.Rd8 Ne7 27.Rc7 Ng6 28.Rcc8 e5 29.f4 Bd7 30.Ra8 Bh3 31.Kf2 b5 32.Rdb8 exf4 33.gxf4 Bd7 34.h4 Bc6 35.h5 Bxa8 36.hxg6 hxg6 37.Rxa8 f5 38.Kg3 a6 39.Kh4 Rg7 40.Kg5 1-0. Astonishingly Topalov tries the same line against Vladimir Kramnik, and suffers a second defeat.

19...Ba6N 20.Bd2 f6 21.Nc4 Rd8 22.a3 Kf7 23.Ne3 h5 24.Nxd5 Rxd5 25.Bb4 Bd8 26.Rc6 Be2 27.Rd6 Rxd6 28.Bxd6 Ke8 29.Bb8 a5 30.Bc7 Bf3 31.Rc3 Bd5 32.f4 Kd7 33.Bxd8 Kxd8 34.Kf2 Kd7 35.Ke3 e5 36.fxe5 fxe5 37.Rc1 a4 38.Rf1 Ke6 39.Rf8 b5 40.Rg8 Kf6 41.Rb8 1-0.

We come to Adams vs van Wely, which produced a surprise black win (the first in this tournament) for the Dutch GM. Immediately after the game Loek van Wely came over to our TV ChessBase studio and analysed it for a world-wide audience. It was a "test broadcast", but worked so well that everyone thoroughly enjoyed it.

TV ChessBase broadcast with Loek van Wely (left) showing his win over Adams
to hundreds of spectators all over the world.

Van Wely with Olena Boytsun and IM Oliver Reeh from ChessBase

For those of you who did not catch the transmission live on Playchess.com we have a video stream plus van Wely's postgame analysis. You can replay the video and follow the analysis on the JavaScript board. Naturally on the Playchess server this is synchronised, and the pieces move automatically as the GM moves them.

• Click here to watch the video
• Click here to replay van Wely's analysis

Remember that our regular TV ChessBase live broadcasts will be conducted every evening at around 19:30h Central European Time from Monday until the end of the tournament.

Standings

Full Schedule and Results

Links

• Official web site
• All ChessBase reports on Dortmund 2005
• ChessBase reports on Dortmund 2004
• ChessBase reports on Dortmund 2003