Dortmund Rd6 – Hits and kicks all round, but no knock-outs

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.

Participants

Round six

Welcome to Planet Kramnik!

The foremost match of the day was also the foremost question: would Kramnik be able to extend his amazing winning streak against Ponomariov? The players were both rested, but this was perhaps more important pyschologically for the Ukrainian who had just lost his second place to Le who defeated him in their respective game. The game had great promise and was quite exciting overall. Kramnik did indeed play very aggressively and developed a serious initiative against Ponomariov's king. At a crucial fork in the road he opted to simplify into an endgame that also gave him solid chances, but Ponomariov held his nereve and steered his way to a draw.

The new second place, Vietnamese Le, had a relatively quiet game against Meier, and there never seemed to be any real chance to rock the boat.

Quang Liem Le, second place and undefeated

Nakamura again played the longest game of the round, and again played just short of the naked kings. In this case he had the upperhand against Giri, with an extra pawn, but the conditions were such that he had no chance of using his king to push forward, and they eventually drew after 72 moves.

Once again, Nakamura's game was the longest of the round, this time against Giri

Pictures by Georgios Souleidis

Standings after six 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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