Dortmund Semis 1: Semifinals begin with draws

Semifinals game 1 – Thursday, July 29

The winners of the combative Group 1 have been paired against the drawing masters of Group 2 in Dortmund. So far it looks like the Group 2 voodoo is the stronger. Both semifinal games were drawn. In case you are keeping score at home, that's seven consecutive draws each for Kramnik and Leko. Let's hope there's a good movie theater in Brissago!

Anand tackled Leko's trademark Sveshnikov Sicilian with the 7.Nd5 variation he has employed on occasion in the past. Leko also has recent experience with this variation, but also on the white side. Anand tried something new on move 12, varying from his game against Topalov in 2003, but it couldn't have been too effective. The game was drawn on White's proposal on move 18 after a few exchanges.

There was considerably more action over in the Russian sector of Dortmund. Will someone please tell Peter Svidler that the Grunfeld is unsound? He keeps playing it and doing just fine, so clearly he needs to be told that you can't use it against super-GMs like Kramnik!

As is typical in this defense, Black suffered and worried about White's central control and passed pawn until an opportunity arose to escape the pressure and reach a bad but drawn endgame. Svidler is the master of recognizing that opportunity in the Grunfeld. He held on to draw against his countryman despite his bishop being stuck on the pathetic e8 square. On Friday Leko and Svidler will take the white pieces against Anand and Kramnik. Drawn games will result in more rapid tiebreaks.

The four players eliminated in the preliminaries don't have to go home. They play amongst themselves to settle places 5-8. Bologan and Rublevsky drew (that's seven in a row for Bologan, too). Over at the kids' table Sergey Karjakin, perhaps exhausted by this point, lost to Germany's Arkady Naiditsch. That's two wins in a row for the German teen, who beat Rublevsky in the last, meaningless semifinal game.

Participants

Full schedule and scoresheet