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Wang Yue Beats Bluebaum; Wojtaszek Sole Leader

Wang Yue Beats Bluebaum; Wojtaszek Sole Leader

PeterDoggers
| 23 | Chess Event Coverage

Drawing Dmitry Andreikin as Black, Radoslaw Wojtaszek grabbed the sole lead at the Sparkassen Chess Meeting in Dortmund. That's because co-leader Matthias Bluebaum suffered his first loss, against Wang Yue.

After round five Wojtaszek is the sole leader. | Photo: Georgios Souleidis.

Before the final weekend we now have six players on 50 percent (2.5 points), one above them and one below. With two rounds to go it's the Polish grandmaster who has good chances to win Dortmund in his first appearance. Kramnik, however, will probably have to wait at least another year to clinch his 11th title.

2017 Sparkassen Chess Meeting | Round 5 Results

Fed Name Rtg Pts Result Pts Fed Name Rtg
Wang Yue 2699 1 - 0 Matthias Bluebaum 2642
Vladimir Kramnik 2812 ½ - ½ 2 Maxime Vachier-Lagrave 2791
Vladimir Fedoseev 2726 2 ½ - ½ 2 Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu 2683
Dmitry Andreikin 2712 2 ½ - ½ Radoslaw Wojtaszek 2736

Among the Chinese grandmasters it's 30-year-old Wang Yue who has the most solid playing style. Many will still remember his amazing streak of not losing a game in 85 encounters between March and December 2008.

His game vs Matthias Bluebaum was won in typical style—starting from a small advantage, keeping things safe and slowly increasing that advantage. As our annotator shows, Bluebaum lost the game when he played too passively at the critical moment.

In October 2007, Wang became the first Chinese player to cross 2700. With this win, he crossed it again.

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Wang Yue re-ented the list on 2700chess.com. | Photo: Georgios Souleidis.

Although it made sense for Dejan Bojkov to look at the only decisive game, the top clash between Vladimir Kramnik and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave could easily have been named game of the day as well. In this fantastic encounter Kramnik was forced to sacrifice a bishop for two pawns, but MVL gave up a rook right after!

"I thought I was better, but I don't think I spoiled a win," said Vachier-Lagrave.

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Vladimir Kramnik is still without a win but theoretically he can still finish in clear first place. | Photo: Georgios Souleidis.

Without too much fireworks Radoslaw Wojtaszek moved to pole position. His treatment of Dmitry Andreikin's Trompowsky was as solid as a rock. However, he spent too much time in the middlegame, and this led to some inaccuracies in the early endgame. It looks like Andreikin was very close to a win on move 35.

"It's always problematic to play slowly and badly," said Wojtaszek. It's hard to argue with that.

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Wojtaszek's play wasn't great, but good enough for sole first. | Photo: Georgios Souleidis.

It could have been a very good day for the Russian players, but it wasn't meant to be. Vladimir Fedoseev had even more reason to complain, after spoiling a completely winning position vs Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu. Later in the endgame it happened once again.

"We both felt it must have been won for White, but luckily it was not so easy," said Nisipeanu.

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How did Fedoseev not win this game? | Photo: Georgios Souleidis.

2017 Sparkassen Chess Meeting | Round 5 Standings

# Fed Name Rtg Perf 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Pts SB
1 Wojtaszek,Radoslaw 2736 2818 ½ ½ 1 ½ ½ 3.0/5
2 Vachier-Lagrave,Maxime 2791 2715 ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ 2.5/5 6.25
3 Andreikin,Dmitry 2712 2723 ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ 2.5/5 6.25
4 Wang Yue 2699 2712 0 ½ ½ 1 ½ 2.5/5 6.25
5 Bluebaum,Matthias 2642 2722 ½ ½ 0 1 ½ 2.5/5 6.25
6 Fedoseev,Vladimir 2726 2717 ½ ½ 0 ½ 1 2.5/5 6.00
7 Nisipeanu,Liviu-Dieter 2683 2734 ½ ½ ½ ½ ½ 2.5/5 6.00
8 Kramnik,Vladimir 2812 2660 ½ ½ ½ 0 ½ 2.0/5


The 45th Sparkassen Chess Meeting takes place July 15-23 in the Orchesterzentrum NRW in Dortmund, Germany. July 17 and 20 are rest days. The time control is 100 minutes for 40 moves, then 50 minutes for 20 moves and then 15 minutes to end the game, with a 30-second increment from move 1.

The pairings for the sixth round, on Saturday, are Bluebaum-Wojtaszek, Nisipeanu-Andreikin, Vachier-Lagrave-Fedoseev, and Wang Yue-Kramnik. You can follow the games each day starting from 15:15 CEST (9:15 a.m. New York, 6:15 Pacific) in Live Chess.

Correction: An earlier verson wrongly stated that Kramnik cannot with the tournament anymore. As fabelhaft mentioned in the comments, Kramnik will be sole first if he beats Wang Yue and Bluebaum and all other games are drawn except Bluebaum-Wojtaszek (1-0).


Previous reports:

PeterDoggers
Peter Doggers

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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