50th International Dortmund Chess Days with many decided games
After his defeat in a spectacular game in the second round, Vladimir Kramnik came back in the third game with a brilliant positional performance.
After Mayor of Dortmund Norbert Schilff made the symbolic first move for him, he played it more quiet with White and gained a small advantage in "No Castling Chess" against the current world No. 3 Fabiano Caruana. Slowly but surely, he extended the advantage and won the endgame. Afterwards Kramnik was a guest of Artur Jussupov and Fiona for a long time in the stream and analysed his game: Ab 5:06
The big winner of the previous day, Dmitry Kollars, again had a promising position. But again the piece play was chaotic on the board and this time his opponent kept the better overview, so Pavel Eljanov won the game. In total, there was only one draw in the NC World Masters in the first three rounds, which is very unusual in classical chess at world class level.
In the A-Open Alexander Donchenko was able to surprise his opponent Aryan Chopra (photo) on the top board in the opening with Black: "I didn't expect ...Bd7. Then I switched the variations in my mind, I shouldn't have exchanged on d7 so early," the Indian grandmaster said afterwards. The game was thus quickly equalised and ended in a draw, with which Donchenko seemed very satisfied. Another young Indian grandmaster, Leon Luke Mendonca, joined the top by beating his compatriot Pranav Anand. Matthias Blübaum and Michael Adams fought for a long time for the full point, but both had to be content with the division of points. Young Ihor Samunenkov in particular thrilled the spectators with a wild game against Adams.
Ruben Gideon Köllner (photo) continues to be the outstanding player in the Sportland NRW Cup. He won against the International Master and YouTuber Georgios Souleidis and has 4 wins from 5 games, drawing only one game.
Both players agreed that Black had good chances in the middlegame. However, "TBG" should not have gotten the weak pawn on h6, but should have gone more consistently for the white king. The 19-year-old is thus one point ahead of the rest of the field and is on course to achieve a valuable grandmaster norm. For this, 7 points from 9 games are necessary. Dinara Wagner ultimately had to settle for half a point against GM Karthik Venkataraman.