On the second board of the A-Open of the 50th International Dortmund Chess Days on Wednesday there was thea match between the current German number 2 and 3: Alexander Donchenko had White against last year's European Champion Matthias Blübaum.
With deep opening preparation and great positional skill Donchenko won the game after three hours.
"I'm very happy that I finally won a tournament game against Matthias," Donchenko said afterwards after his first win over Blübaum. He explained the game to press spokesman Patrick Zelbel afterwards: Interview mit Donchenko
As the two Indian grandmasters Chopra and Mendonca drew on the top board, Donchenko is now the sole leader and favourite to win the A-Open of the Sparkassen Chess Trophy 2023. Mendonca, who has been touring chess tournaments in Europe for 4 months, praised his opponent Aryan Chopra's idea of placing the queen on a8. Chopra thus equalised strongly. Michael Adams played at his regular place, the third board, and had to settle for a black draw against GM Raja Rithvik.
A particularly rare story occurred on board 12 between Dennis Wagner and Enis Zuferi. The German grandmaster moved his rook to a4 and back on move 11 and 12 before castling long on move 21. Both players did not notice this violation of the rules and White won the game despite the illegal castling.
All eyes were on the stage in the Sportland NRW Cup. The 11-year-old Hussain Besou met Dinara Wagner with White. Besou blitzed down the opening, playing a piece sacrifice in the Najdorf Sicilian. But then he switched moves and quickly had no compensation at all for the piece. Wagner easily took the game to the full point and thus closed the gap to the leader Ruben Köllner.
Köllner played on the side board against Artur de Winter from the Netherlands. De Winter's tournament start didn't go according to plan, but today he played a nice game and checkmated Köllner handsomely (diagram). Karthik Venkataraman is close to the leading duo with 4 points after his win today over Jana Schneider, the last player in the table. The Big Greek, meanwhile, failed to gain an advantage from the opening and the game against GM Saltaev ended quickly in a draw.
Tomorrow morning the cancelled game between Besou and Petrovskiy will be played.
Intermediate standings Sportland NRW Cup:
1. Köllner 4,5
2. Wagner 4,5
3. Venkataraman 4
4. Souleidis 3,5