Dortmund Rd7 – Kramnik beats Meier and breaks 2800

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 seven

The entrance hall

The tournament program

The great poker players have a quality that helps separate them from the rest: they recognize when they are hot, and exploit this to the max to make up for the lackadaisical days that will inevitably occur as well. Vladimir Kramnik shows he has the very same skill, and with an unusual set of circumstances where he is able to impose his will, and his opponents are wilting more often than not, he is not content to simply cruise to a tournament win. He played a tough game against Meier keeping the tension alive, and was rewarded in the end. To say that his 6.0/7 is a 300+ performance would be reiterating old news at this point, but it also marked another important milestone: his return to the exclusive 2800 club. The calculations of his results show that if the tournament were to end today and he were not to play until the next rating list came out, he would officially be ranked 2800.

Helmut Kohl plays the ritual first move as they ready to sacrifice Meier to Kramnik

Quang Liem Le, now 1.5 points behind Kramnik, had a long and hard-fought game against Hikaru Nakamura, and though they were not the longest game this time round and did not play to the bare kings (the American could be sick) it was typical of the chess-to-the-end games that Nakamura has insisted on playing. The no-draw rules clearly have no impact on his games. No decision was achieved and Kramnik increased his lead to two full points, while others threaten to catch Le.

Nakamura playing Le in round seven

The surprise of the round, meaning no disrespect to the young Dutchman, was Giri's win over Ponomariov. The reason is both because Ponomariov had started as a potential contender for top honors in the early rounds, and because the double-rook endgame reached, seemed tenable at first view. Considering the Ukrainian is far the more experienced player, one would have expected this to be enough, but it was not. With his win, Giri moves into third place and is now only a half-point behind Le. It looks like there will be a brawl to see who gets second.

Anish Giri and Ruslan Ponomariov

Pictures by Georgios Souleidis

Standings after seven 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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