Two upsets

BY: BOBBY ANG

(As published in Chess Piece, Business World, 26 June 2010)

The Dortmund Sparkassen Chess Meeting is an elite by-invitation-only chess tournament held every summer in Dortmund, Germany. It is one of the four super-GM tournaments in the international chess circuit, the others being Corus Wijk aan Zee, Sofia and Linares.

The tournament used to be a 12-man round-robin event, but as the budget got tighter the entry list dwindled down until nowadays it is composed of a six-player field playing double round-robin. Four of the players are invited on the basis of their past tournament results, one is for the highest-rated German player (usually this meant Robert Huebner, but since his retirement from active play in the early 2000s it was GM Arkady Naiditsch who took his place) and one slot is reserved for the winner of the Moscow Aeroflot Open -- this year it translated into the Vietnamese GM Le Quang Liem.

The Dortmund super-tournaments are usually plagued with a lot of short draws, but this year there was a change of wind and there were a lot of hard fights, and several upsets scored. In the second round former FIDE world champion Ruslan Ponomariov proved that he is not yet a spent force by winning against the top seed Vladimir Kramnik.

The Bogo Indian is not as popular now than it used to be. The Great Swede Ulf Andersson was its main promoter and now that he is semi-retired the opening receded together with him. The advantage of the Bogo Indian is that Black’s plans are easy to implement and you don’t need to know a lot of theory. Against an aggressive white player this is a good antidote, but a patient "technical" player will make you suffer.

After losing his world championship title Kramnik has been trying to sharpen his style a bit. This has caused a few more losses than normal. Add this game to the list of "games Kramnik usually does not lose." Playing against an ultra-solid opponent he varied his opening moves a bit to get more interesting play. It did not turn out to be very wise as Ponomariov got a strong position out of the opening. Kramnik could not coordinate his pieces properly and got hit with a nice tactical shot which forced a winning endgame.

Ponomariov, Ruslan (2734) -- Kramnik, Vladimir (2790) [E11]
Sparkassen GM Dortmund GER (2), 16.07.2010

This game lasted 36 moves but he could have resigned on move 21 with a clear conscience.







Another upset was in the 4th round. Le Quang Liem proved that he belonged in this august company by taking down Ponomariov.

Le Quang Liem (2681) -- Ponomariov, Ruslan (2734) [D87]
Sparkassen GM Dortmund GER (4), 18.07.2010

Lately Le Quang has been training under former FIDE World Champion Alexander Khalifman, and it shows, for he has shot up the rating lists and is now in the top 50 of the world.







(Photos sourced from the tournament's official website)