Dortmund Rd5 – Kramnik on 3102 performance

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.

Participants

Round five

Lights! Action!

The day before the rest day was as action packed as one could hope. Ponomariov had been making a go for it at trying to stay within striking distance of Kramnik, and had been doing a decent job of it until a catastrophe hit in the guise of a brilliant Vietnamese prodigy. Quang Liem played a strong game, and entered a complicated endgame that he conducted to perfection wresting the second place away from Ruslan, and taking his score to 3.0/5.

Quang Liem Le is now second, undefeated at 3.0/5 and a 2804 performance

Ponomariov had managed to stay competitive with Kramnik, but now seems like he
will have to fight for second.

Vladimir Kramnik facing Anish Giri in round five

Kramnik has been defying expectations, odds, you name it. After a heavily criticized drawing attitude in the recent Candidates matches, and having seen young Karjakin take over his spot as the top Russian in the FIDE ratings, it seemed as if time was finally taking its toll. Who could have expected to see Kramnik coming to the event playing like this? Playing with the fire and vigor of his youth, taking chances, and scoring a mid-tournament performance that just leaves one speechless. 3102... Adjectives fail us. It is worth mentioning that in the live ratings at 2700Chess.com he is just three points short of breaking back into the 2800 club.

Anish Giri was unable to do any better than his colleagues

His game against Giri was typical of his event: strong, energetic, and deadly efficient.

Nakamura played a combative Classical King's Indian against Meier, and boring it was not. He got into a bit of trouble, but the position was such that Meier had few ways to really improve upon his position. Neither was willing to call it a day even in the endgame, and the two slugged it out almost to the bare kings after 150 moves.

Georg Meier has also been outgunned so far

Pictures by Georgios Souleidis

Standings after five rounds

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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