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 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.
| Player | Title |
Nat. |
Born |
Rating |
| Kramnik, Vladimir | GM |
RUS |
1975 |
2781 |
| Nakamura, Hikaru | GM |
USA |
1987 |
2770 |
| Ponomariov, Ruslan | GM |
UKR |
1983 |
2764 |
| Le, Quang Liem | GM |
VIE |
1991 |
2715 |
| Giri, Anish | GM |
NED |
1994 |
2715 |
| Meier, Georg | GM |
GER |
1987 |
2656 |
| Round 2: Friday, July 22, 15:00h | ||
Le Quang Liem |
½-½ |
Hikaru Nakamura |
Ruslan Ponomariov |
1-0 |
Anish Giri |
Georg Meier |
0-1 |
Vladimir Kramnik |
Quang Liem Le facing Hikaru Nakamura
Kramnik played a very brave game and fully deserves whatever he reaped. He played Meier as Black and spent much of the time either equal or slightly worse, yet when the German's clock began to grow short of time, he gambled on a complicated position and his opponent's lack of time in what could objectively have gone quite badly for him. However, the tactics were messy to say the least and Meier did indeed go astray and fail to make the most of it, allowing Kramnik to leap to a 2.0/2 lead.
Georg Meier against Vladimir Kramnik
Ponomariov commented after the game, "Chess is a strange game sometimes. Yesterday I was creative and lost, today I played rather weak, but my opponent made a few mistakes and I won." To his credit he played a fine positional game, and outplayed his opponent to win it.
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LinksThe 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. |
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