Nakamura beats Kramnik in last round Dortmund

Tournament winner Vladimir Kramnik took some risks, and then unexpectedly lost with the white pieces to Hikaru Nakamura in the last round of the Sparkassen Chess Meeting in Dortmund. The games Le Quang Liem-Giri and Meier-Ponomariov ended in draws.

General info

The 39th Sparkassen Chess Meeting took place July 21-31, 2011 in the City Theater of Dortmund, Germany. It was a 6-player double round robin event. This year Vladimir Kramnik, Hikaru Nakamura, Ruslan Ponomariov, Anish Giri, Le Quang Liem and Georg Meier played. For the second time the organizers in Dortmund used an anti-draw rule: the players were not allowed to offer a draw during the game. The game would be declared a draw when a win for either side was not possible any more, or in case of a three-fold repetition.

Round 10

The 39th Sparkassen Chess Meeting had a remarkable finish: Hikaru Nakamura, who had played so disappointingly in Dortmund, won against Vladimir Kramnik, who had played so strongly. Or rather, as some people mentioned in the comments below, Kramnik lost to Nakamura. Just like in their mutual game in London last year, the Russian went for a long-term piece sacrifice. The difference was that this time he still believed it to be correct after the game. Kramnik-Nakamura Dortmund, 2011 23.Nfxg5!? Afterwards Kramnik made clear that the game was much harder to play for White than for Black. "In almost every position I had about two or three very serious possibilities, while my opponent had to make only moves all the time." He added that there was an enormous amount of variations to calculate. "This way I got into timetrouble and then I spoilt it. Although even in timetrouble the position was not so clear." Kramnik, who was quite down to earth after this loss, said that he deliberately took risks in the last round. "I had nothing to lose, and if I had won I would have overstepped 2800 and would have scored an excellent result here." (We'll post a video interview with the winner soon, so stay tuned!) Le Quang Liem and Anish Giri split the point in a well-known line of the Queen's Indian defense. Neither of them managed to break the symmetry of the position to his advantage. The 20-year-old Vietnamese kept a small advantage till the end, but his 17-year-old Dutch colleague defended himself flawlessly. The draw by threefold repetition after 38 moves was logical. The game between Ruslan Ponomariov and Georg Meier also ended in a draw. The players went for a line of the English Opening that had Semi-Slav ideas. After the opening Meier seemed to have reached a better development and a small positional advantage, but the former FIDE World Champion didn't make a mistake. In the ending Black had a passed pawn, but this was only one 'weakness' for White and there was no way to create a second one. (Descriptions of Le Quang Liem-Giri and Ponomariov-Meier are based on the round report on the official website.) And so Vladimir Kramnik won his 10th title in Dortmund, which event manager Gerd Kolbe called a 'record for eternity' - Garry Kasparov won Linares nine times, Vishy Anand won Wijk aan Zee five times. Sixteen years ago, a 20-year-old Kramnik won for the first time in Dortmund and in 2011 he set a record that will probably never be broken. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"155","attributes":{"alt":"","title":"","class":"media-image","typeof":"foaf:Image","wysiwyg":1}}]] For the second time, Le Quang Liem had qualified by winning the Aeroflot open in Moscow. For the second time the super-solid Vietnamese GM finished second in Dortmund, and he was obviously happy with that. Ruslan Ponomariov was less satisfied. "After winning the tournament any other result in the next year is worse." The Ukrainian had to do without a second, because Zahar Efimenko was playing the World Team Championship. In his final speech at the closing ceremony Kolbe also mentioned another record: that about 200,000 chess fans had followed the games online this year. The organizers were again happy with the anti-draw rule and felt that it clearly stimulated fighting chess. Today's top players seem to agree with this. Alongside the main event there's always a GM norm tournament Dortmund (with the top two boards playing on stage as well). This year the Helmut-Kohls-Turnier was won by 16-year-old Dutch IM Robin van Kampen, who secured his third GM norm. At the next FIDE Congress he will be awarded the GM title. The local fans saw their talent Matthias Blübaum getting a good result too. With 6/9 the 14-year-old scored more than was needed for his second IM norm.

Games round 10

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Photos © Georgios Souleidis, more here

Links

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• Games in PGN via TWIC