Fridman and Kollars start with victories
The first round in the ten-strong field of grandmasters in the Deutschland Grand Prix and the two Sportland NRW Cups started on Tuesday with the opening move by Stefan Koth, who led the tournament for 20 years as tournament director and now works as managing director of the "Initiative Pro Schach" in the event team. The opening move was made at the board by the two youngest grandmasters: 16-year-old Vincent Keymer led the white pieces against German Dmitrij Kollars. The two played a combative game, which Kollars won in beautiful style with a king's attack after a changeable middlegame.
The local hero Daniel Fridman, who lives in Bochum, had a perfect start. With the black pieces, the opening phase already went his way and in the middlegame he was able to collect some pawns from Mateusz Bartel. So the endgame was then an easy exercise for the long-time national player and he led it to victory without any problems.
His national team colleague Georg Meier was also well on his way to a win against the former FIDE World Champion Ruslan Ponomarjow. But he allowed a tricky opportunity to slip away, so that the Ukrainian escaped into a draw. Andreas Heimann fought in vain for a long time against the world-class player Pavel Eljanov and had to admit defeat.
Results:
Kasimjanov - Kamsky ½ - ½
Keymer - Kollars 0 - 1
Heimann - Eljanov 0 - 1
Meier - Ponomarjow ½ - ½
Bartel - Fridman 0 - 1
Here you´ll find the opening video besides other video analysis with out top players:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6SrtXuALlA
Tomorrow the second round starts at 10am:
Kamsky - Fridman
Ponomarjow - Bartel
Kollars - Meier
Eljanov - Keymer
Kasimjanov - Heimann
Also scheduled for 4pm is the NC World Masters opener between 14th World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik and 15th World Chess Champion Viswanathan Anand in innovative No Castling Chess, with Anand opening the game with White. Live coverage can be found via the tournament website: www.sparkassen-chess-trophy.de