Dortmund 2012 Tournament Underway
Vladimir Kramnik shocked his opponent - and all his rivals - by playing the King's Indian in his second round game of the 2012 Dortmund tournament.
Kramnik is an expert at destroying the King's Indian from the white side, so it was a huge surprise that he played it himself with black to win brilliantly against Jan Gustafsson.
Other decisive results in round two saw Ruslan Ponomariov beating Fabiano Caruana and newly crowned world rapid champion Sergey Karjakin defeating Mateusz Bartel. Bartel was the only loser a relatively quiet first round, against Georg Meier.
The standings after 2 rounds:
| # | Name | Nat | Elo | Pts |
| 1 | Kramnik, Vladimir | RUS | 2799 | 1½ |
| 2 | Ponomariov, Ruslan | UKR | 2726 | 1½ |
| 3 | Karjakin, Sergey | RUS | 2779 | 1½ |
| 4 | Meier, Georg | GER | 2644 | 1½ |
| 5 | Leko, Peter | HUN | 2730 | 1 |
| 6 | Naiditsch, Arkadij | GER | 2700 | 1 |
| 7 | Fridman, Daniel | GER | 2655 | 1 |
| 8 | Gustafsson, Jan | GER | 2629 | ½ |
| 9 | Caruana, Fabiano | ITA | 2775 | ½ |
| 10 | Bartel, Mateusz | POL | 2674 | 0 |
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The 40th edition of the Dortmund Sparkassen chess meeting takes place from 13-22 July in Germany. The format for the 2012 competition is different to recent years. Instead of a 6-player double round-robin it will be a 10-player single round-robin, headed by Kramnik in search of an 11th title!
The rounds start each day at 15:00 local time (13:00 UTC), except the last round which starts 2 hours earlier. There is one rest day on the 18th July.
The time control is 40 moves in 100 minutes, then 20 moves in 50 minutes, and then 15 minutes to finish with a 30 second increment from the start of the game.
Follow the games live here.
Photos: Georgios Souleidis.
