Perspective from a Patzer: Dortmund, Round 3

Round 3 of the Dortmund Tournament was played today. The pairings were:

Gelfand - Anand, Mamedyarov-Kramnik, Leko-Naiditsch, and Carlsen-Alekseev

All 4 games were drawn, "boring......." you might think but one game still had some excitement despite being drawn. I have to say that the game of the day was Carlsen-Alekseev. We all know that with Carlsen's youth that he has plenty of fighting spirit. Surely, there was no lack of this today. Here is the today's game with a few notes.

Just to quickly recap the other three games:

Gelfand-Anand: It was a Semi-Slav game where things were quickly liquidated to equality after Anand's 13...e5, the game was drawn at move 21. Not impressive stuff for the spectators.

Mamedyarov-Kramnik: It was a Queen's Indian Defense where Kramnik found a clever way to trade down to an equal position (20...Bxf4 and 21...Bxh2+) with 22. Kxh2 Qc7+ 23. Ng3 Bb7 to follow if they had not agreed for the draw at move 21.  Who can blame Kramnik though, since he had the black pieces and came off a nice win against Gelfand in the last round.

Leko-Naiditsch: It was a Sicilian defense with the rare move 2...Nf6, one of the sidelines. It seemed like Leko had some type of advantage in the early middle game (Maybe 11. Rd1 is more accurate), but once black got in 22...e5 it seemed the position was quite equal. The game was drawn after move 38.

The standings after 3 rounds-

1-2: Kramnik, Alekseev

3-6: Anand, Leko, Mamedyarov, Carlsen

7-8: Gelfand, Naiditsch