Dortmund: Bartel wins, Eljanov sacrifices a queen

Exciting chess

While the match between Vladimir Kramnik and Viswanathan Anand had a rest day, the round robin tournaments of the 48th International Dortmund Chess Days continued on Friday.

In the Deutschland Grand Prix, Polish grandmaster Mateusz Bartel had a difficult time in the first rounds, but he could land a nice attacking win with Black against Andreas Heimann. Heimann’s king was pinned in the centre out of a Catalan Opening and Bartel won quickly.

He shows the game himself in this video:

Power Play 24: A repertoire for black against the Catalan

On this DVD Grandmaster Daniel King offers you a repertoire for Black against the Catalan, based around maintaining the rock of a pawn on d5. Keeping central control ultimately gives Black good chances to launch an attack against the enemy king.

The remaining four games ended drawn, but had a lot to offer in terms of content. First and foremost, the leader Pavel Eljanov played a fantastic queen sacrifice for two pieces and strong passed pawns in the middlegame. With little time on the clock, Ruslan Ponomariov escaped into a draw by repetition.

Rustam Kasimdzhanov, also a former Fide World Champion, had a promising position against Daniel Fridman, who had been playing well so far, but in the end also had to settle for a draw.

The 16-year-old Vincent Keymer won impressively in the fifth round in a rook ending against Gata Kamsky. On Friday, the youngster was in trouble against his compatriot Georg Meier, but he escaped with a half point as well.

Master Class Vol.5: Emanuel Lasker

The name Emanuel Lasker will always be linked with his incredible 27 years reign on the throne of world chess. In 1894, at the age of 25, he had already won the world title from Wilhelm Steinitz and his record number of years on the throne did not end till 1921 when Lasker had to accept the superiority of Jose Raul Capablanca. But not only had the only German world champion so far seen off all challengers for many years, he had also won the greatest tournaments of his age, sometimes with an enormous lead. The fascinating question is, how did he manage that?

Vincent Keymer