2nd Win For Nisipeanu In Dortmund

After just two rounds, GM Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu is already a full point ahead of the field at the Sparkassen Chess Meeting in Dortmund. In the second round, the German GM beat GM Arkadij Naiditsch.

The field in Dortmund is a very interesting mix of players and styles, which can lead to many great fights. Sunday's second round saw just that: four excellent games, with just one (sharp) draw at the end of the day.

The surprising leader is seventh-seeded GM Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu. After his flashy attack against Wesley So, he defeated GM Arkadij Naiditsch with the black pieces in what was the clash of the leaders.

In this highly complicated game, the computer evaluation was always hard to trust because of Black's potential rush of his central pawns. Naiditsch was probably winning one or two times, but after the time control Nisipeanu's pawns became too strong.

“Although Arkadij played very well and had a good position in the middlegame, he lost track at some point,” said Nisipeanu. “We were both in time trouble and then I could turn the tide.”

Nisipeanu moves to 2.0/2. | Photo Dagobert Kohlmeyer.

USA's newest recruits, GM Fabiano Caruana and GM Wesley So, met for the first time both playing under the stars and stripes. They had played six times before, with four draws and two wins for Caruana.

During the Norway Chess tournament Caruana's horrible score against the Najdorf in recent years was discussed. Then, he “improved” it to 5.5/17 (since 2012) with a draw with Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. In this round in Dortmund another loss was added, So's first win over Caruana.

Annotations by GM Dejan Bojkov

The organizers haven't yet updated “Italien” to “USA” for Caruana. | Photo Dagobert Kohlmeyer.

Like So, GM Vladimir Kramnik bounced back from his first-round loss with a win — the third full point scored by Black. The 14th world champion had no trouble beating GM Hou Yifan, who tried the rare 4.Qe2 against the Berlin.

Garry Kasparov might still regret that he didn't try other fourth moves in his title match in 2000, but this one doesn't look particularly challenging. Kramnik took the initiative with an interesting pawn sacrifice, and soon reached a strategically winning endgame:

GM Vlastimil Hort played the first move for Hou Yifan. | Photo Dagobert Kohlmeyer.

The only draw of the round was not a bad game either. GM Ian Nepomniachtchi and GM Georg Meier fought out a line of the Classical French that might get more popular. In his grandmaster repertoire book 1.e4 vs The French, Caro-Kann & Philidor for Quality Chess, GM Parimarjan Negi writes about combining ... Be7 and ...a6:

This move introduces an interesting system which has gone by relatively unnoticed (outside of correspondence chess) for a while. At the top level, Nakamura has used it regularly, but only in faster time controls. Black is anticipating the dxc5 exchange (which is what we intend to play against 8...0-0) and he hopes that in the resulting structure, his ...a6 will turn out to be a more useful move than castling.

In the game, the white queen started snatching the g7-pawn, as if it were a Winawer, leaving the king abandoned. Black always had a perpetual, tried to find more, but there wasn't 

The players have a pretty relaxed schedule. Monday is already a rest day, and there will be another one after the fourth round. On Tuesday the two Russians Kramnik and Nepomniachtchi face each other, and with Black, Hou Yifan needs to try and stop the tournament leader.

Dortmund 2015 | Schedule & Results

Dortmund 2015 | Round 2 Standings

#	Name	Rtg	Perf	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	Pts	SB
1	Nisipeanu,Liviu-Dieter	2654	3550		1				1			2.0/2
2	Naiditsch,Arkadij	2722	2719	0				1				1.0/2	1.00
3	Nepomniachtchi,Ian	2720	2729				½			½		1.0/2	0.75
4	Meier,Georg	2654	2698			½					½	1.0/2	0.75
5	Kramnik,Vladimir	2783	2699		0						1	1.0/2	0.50
6	So,Wesley	2778	2730	0						1		1.0/2	0.50
7	Caruana,Fabiano	2805	2559			½			0			0.5/2	0.50
8	Hou,Yifan	2676	2528				½	0				0.5/2	0.50

The 43rd Sparkassen Chess Meeting takes place June 27-July 5 in the NRW Orchestra Center in central Dortmund. It is a single round robin with eight players. | Games via TWIC