What a start in the Sportland NRW Cup of the 50th International Dortmund Chess Days! 5 games saw 5 winners. The national player WGM Dinara Wagner (photo) and IM Georgios Souleidis as well as the 12-year-old Hussain Besou had a dream start: they beat the three participating grandmasters.
On stage Wagner was able to quickly target the black king with her pawn advance g3-g4-g5 in the Catalan opening. Her opponent Saltaev defended inaccurately and quickly got into a big disadvantage, so Dinara Wagner won quickly. She explained her game to press officer Patrick Zelbel afterwards:
Dinara Wagner after her opening win
In parallel, Ruben Gideon Köllner with Black was able to slowly outplay his opponent Jana Schneider and won the game confidently.
Right in front of the stage, the German young star Hussain Besou (photo) played with White against GM Alexander Bagrationi. Bagrationi played a risky opening, and very quickly got into a big disadvantage. Besou won two pawns on the queenside and converted his advantage sovereignly: Besou - Bagrationi
In a wild Sicilian game Ukrainian Vadym Petrovskiy kept the upper hand against Arthur de Winter.
Meanwhile, "The Big Greek" Georgios Souleidis had to play top-seeded GM Karthik Venkataraman with Black in the first round. He told in an interview afterwards that he "didn't feel like playing the game all week, because Venkataraman just plays everything". The Indian grandmaster chose 1.c4 and Souleidis surprised him with the "Adhiban Variation". Souleidis won the game in a beautiful attack: Venkataraman - Souleidis
All in all, the 50th International Dortmund Chess Days on the occasion of its anniversary surpassed all records of participants:
569 participants (555 of them in the Sparkassen Open).
43 nations
121 title holders
31 grandmasters, 15 female grandmasters
In the Sparkassen A-Open most of the favourites won their games: On stage GM Matthias Blübaum, GM Alexander Donchenko (photo) and GM Michael Adams. On board 5 GM Gata Kamsky, who already beat Garry Kasparov in the Westfalenhallen in 1992, had to give up half a point against FM Michael Coenen. All in all, the mode of the accelerated Swiss system already provided for many high-class games in the opening round.
Tomorrow we continue at 10:30 with the second round in the B-Open, at 3 pm with the second round in the A-Open and Sportland NRW Cup!