Dortmund Rd10 – Kramnik goes for broke against Nakamura

From Thursday July 21 to Sunday July 31, 2010 the 39th edition annual Sparkassen Chess-Meeting is taking place in Dortmund, Germany. It is a six-player round robin, in which each player has to play two games against each of the others, one with as White and one as Black. Draw offers are not allowed – a game can only be declared a draw, by the arbiter, if there is no possible win for one side, or if a position is repeated three times. The winner of the tournament will be determined after ten rounds.

Games start at 15:00h = 3 p.m. local time (CEST, = 17:00 Moscow, 14:00 p.m. London, 9:00 a.m. New York). All games will be broadcast by the official web site's "Live Games" page and on the Playchess.com server. As in the previous year the moves of the Sparkassen Chess-Meeting will be transmitted on the Internet with a delay of 15 minutes – which means that the moves stay in the playing hall for that period, before they are broadcast to the rest of the world. This is an important anti-cheating measure that has been proposed to FIDE since October 2005 and has the support of most of the top players. We commend the Dortmund organisers for taking the initiative.

Round ten

The stage is set

One might have expected the tournament to end somewhat peacefully, in spite of the no-draw rule, since most players had little to gain by taking chances in the last round. Most, but not all. Two players had something to gain, and nothing to lose, and they were paired against each other in the last round as fate would have it. Kramnik has already clinched the tournament in the penultimate round, and while he could simply take the prize and rest, he had an added incentive to win his last game: a ticket back to the 2800 group. In spite of having been within one point of it in 2008, the fact of the matter is that he was last rated 2800 back in 2003, and the chance to rejoin those ranks had to be quite enticing indeed.

Nakamura is known for playing his games to the end anyhow, but a funny thing happened over the course of the tournament, nothing serious, an annoyance at best, but still a nagging one: he lost the title of top-rated American to Gata Kamsky. While he was hemorrhaging Elo points at Dortmund, Kamsky was doing well at the World Team Championship, and a win in the last round would prevent that bragging right from being denied him.

The game started fairly normally until Kramnik took everyone by surprise by sacrificing a knight for two pawns and long-term attack something that is atypical for him to say the least. It was a thrilling game, and eventually it became time to accept no win was forthcoming and a draw was not unreasonable, however the Russian declined the parachute to go down in blazing glory.

A thrilling game was an apt finish to a great tournament

In spite of the disappointing result, it was symbolic of Kramnik's tournament, in which he came jonesing for a good fight, and played in several of the most exciting and entertaining games. He still finished at a temporary rating of 2793, and will recover his status as top Russian player. We can only cross our fingers to see more.

In second place was Liem Le Quang, who once again qualified for Dortmund on his own merit, and once again did very well, this time being the only undefeated player in the event. In third was the most uncompromising player: Ruslan Ponomariov, who scored only four draws with three losses and three wins.

Tied with him, though a fraction behind on tiebreak, was 17-year-old Anish Giri who also continues his climb and has gained 21 Elo since the list was published. Nakamura had a very tough event, but managed to stop the rot with his two wins at the end. Finally, the local hero Georg Meier certainly suffered at the hands of such strong players, but to paraphrase Nietzsche: "what doesn't kill you, can only make you stronger."

Statistics

We take a look at the obligatory statistics, and compare them with the recently ended event in Biel:

Dortmund 30 30.0% 56.7% 13 .3%

Number of games White wins Draws Black wins

Biel 30 23.3% 50.0% 26.7%

Dortmund was, like Biel, a tournament with a relatively low draw quota. Looking at the final table above we see that most draws were by Le Quang Liem (nine), followed by Giri and Meier (six each), Nakamura (five) and Kramnik and Ponomariov (four each). There was just one short draw (Le Quang vs Nakamura in 22) and only two games less than 30 moves. The longest game was Meier vs Nakamura, which lasted 150 moves.

Live ratings

Now to the live ratings, calculated by IM Artiom Tsepotan together with International Arbiter Dr. Christopher Wright on July 31 July 2011, 16:20 GMT. The ratings of the top twenty players in the world are as follows:

If we compare this to his standing after round seven, when he was at 2800 on the dot, we can see that with is final round loss Kramnik slipped from 2796.9 to 2792.8, very unlucky when you remember how close he came to the magical 2800 mark. After winning his final game Hikaru Nakamura climbed from 2749.8 to 2758.4 and from 14th to eighth place in the world rankings. This makes him, once again, the highest ranked player in the USA, ahead of Gata Kamsky, who is currently 2755.8 and eleventh in the world.

Fifteen minute broadcast delay

We did not want to spoil the event for the more sensitive of our readers, so we did not inform you that the moves were once again being broadcast on the Internet with a 15-minute delay, i.e. the games actually started fifteen minutes earlier and the moves fed to the chess servers (naturally at the original rate) fifteen minutes after they were made. Nobody to our knowledge complained or even noticed it. So the system worked, even if it may have inconvenienced a few journalists – one journalist? – in the press room. However we have no word of that either. Those who were on vacation may have missed the lively debate we had on the subject on our news page.

Schedule and results

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN 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.

Previous reports

• ChessBase reports on Dortmund 2010
• ChessBase reports on Dortmund 2009
• ChessBase reports on Dortmund 2008
• ChessBase reports on Dortmund 2007
• ChessBase reports on Dortmund 2006
• ChessBase reports on Dortmund 2005
• ChessBase reports on Dortmund 2004
• ChessBase reports on Dortmund 2003

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