Games 1st round + short interview Boris Gelfand
In the first round not much exciting happened here in Dortmund. Carlsen avoided Leko's Marshall with 8.d4!?, a move which can be dangerous if the opponent doesn't know his theory. Black's 15...Nb5 was a novelty (though 16...Bf6 would have transposed back to two games Polgar-Nunn and Nijboer-Sokolov) and White had a very slight edge for a while, until it was Magnus who had to be careful because of his 26.Rd3?!.Anand too was never really in danger against Kramnik; until 11.Qc2 they followed the recent game Cmilyte-Galliamova and just like in that game Black's harmonic, solid set-up meant that White's bishop pair was not a big deal. Gelfand-Alekseev started very exciting, partly because of the novelty 12.e4!?, and Black had to play some accurate moves to avoid losing his queen. That was exactly what Alekseev did and because of a major exchange (and no Sofia rule here) the two gentlemen decided not to play on. And so the only player who won was Mamedyarov, who beat the sensation of two years ago in a dusty old line but with modern positional means.
Peter Doggers joined a chess club a month before turning 15 and still plays for it. He used to be an active tournament player and holds two IM norms. Peter has a Master of Arts degree in Dutch Language & Literature. He briefly worked at New in Chess, then as a Dutch teacher and then in a project for improving safety and security in Amsterdam schools. Between 2007 and 2013 Peter was running ChessVibes, a major source for chess news and videos acquired by Chess.com in October 2013. As our Director News & Events, Peter writes many of our news reports. In the summer of 2022, The Guardian’s Leonard Barden described him as “widely regarded as the world’s best chess journalist.”
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