Due to the Chess Olympiad now taking place in India shortly after the 49th International Dortmund Chess Days, the winner of the Sparkassen NC Online Open 2021 will not be able to travel to Dortmund in July. Krishnan Sasikiran was nominated for the Indian national team and will not be able to participate due to training camps in the run-up to the Chess Olympiad.
The event team of the Sparkassen Chess Trophy wishes Sasikiran a successful Chess Olympiad and hopes to welcome him personally in Dortmund in one of the next editions!
Instead, another world-class player and old friend has confirmed his participation in Dortmund: GM Michael Adams will once again take part in the International Dortmund Chess Days - for the first time in the No Castling Chess! Adams won the Grandmaster Tournament of the Dortmund Chess Days in 2013 ahead of Vladimir Kramnik and Peter Leko, scoring an outstanding 7 points from 9 games with an Elo performance of 2923. To this day, of course, he is a national player for England and a permanent fixture in various club teams in Europe. It will be interesting to see how he adapts to the No Castling Chess mode and how Adams arranges the games. The modified field of participants is now:
Viswanathan Anand, 15th World Chess Champion and winner NC World Masters 2021.
Vladimir Kramnik, 14th World Chess Champion, 10-time winner of the International Dortmund Chess Days
Michael Adams, winner Sparkassen Chess Meeting 2013, best English chess player
Daniel Fridman, European Team Champion with Germany 2011
Michael Adams will open with white against Daniel Fridman in the first round. Last year, spectators saw Kramnik and Anand open their games with 1.c4. In the Online Open, however, Krishnan Sasikiran in particular showed many other possibilities very successfully.
This year again, everyone can try their hand at the innovative chess variation in the Sparkassen NC Online Open and win an invitation to the 50th International Dortmund Chess Days. The tournament will again take place on lichess: Sparkassen Chess Trophy Dortmund • lichess.org
The picture shows Michael Adams in his black game in Dortmund against GM Artur Jussupow in 1998. This year Jussupow will commentate the games live from Dortmund together with Fiona Steil-Antoni - Photo: Gerhard Hund