Dortmund Rd8 – Kramnik has miracle save; Pono beats 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 eight

The stage with the actors

Anish Giri's game against Georg Meier was a strange one. Giri began by committing one of the most basic opening offenses: neglecting his development, and Meier had chances of gaining a potentially decisive edge. It never took place as Meier retributed the favor by ignor8ing principles of his own: when behind material but ahead in development, one does not go about exchanging pieces, especially the ones that we are ahead in development with. Yet that is what he did, and suddenly the roles were reversed and the material disadvantage began to weigh in. The endgame was troublesome, but never quite decisive, and the players eventually drew.

Kramnik expereinced his first genuine offday in the tournament, and was in serious danger of losing to Le in their encounter. He missed some chances to achieve a solid edge, then went into a bad line, likely due to a miscalculation, and came out of it with a much worse endgame. Things might have gone south, but Le then committed his own share of imprecisions, while the Russian seemed to wake up and found the correct moves in time to save the game.

Quang Liem Le and Vladimir Kramnik embark on the most dramatic game of the event

Whether it is one of those incompatibility issues between players, or due to serious lack of form, Nakamura lost to Ponomariov for the second time, and despite playing on in an objectively lost position, no respite ever appeared on the horizon.

Both Ponomariov and Nakamura have epitomized fighting spiriti in their own way

Whereas Nakamura's combativity has materialized via his unwillingness to quit a game until its essence has been snuffed out, Ponomariov's is no less and out of eight games, he has scored only two draws. If there is a prize for fighting spirit, both players will be top candidates.

Pictures by Georgios Souleidis

Standings after eight 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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