Last year, in the absence of Vladimir Kramnik, he already stunned the spectators and experts with his tournament victory in the NC World Masters of the Sparkassen Chess Trophy. Now Dmitrij Kollars first tournament game was against the 10-time Dortmund winner.
Kollars didn't come out of the opening at all well with White after Jürgen Grastat made the first move for him Grastat ran the International Dortmund Chess Days for 20 years as tournament director (1983 - 2002). Kollars then decided to complicate the top game of the day a lot. In the resulting entanglements he then kept the overview, punished the former world champion's mistakes and won the game in grand style.
"I still have a lot of adrenaline in me, but it feels good," the young German said in the interview a few minutes after his victory.
The whole interview including analysis can be found on YouTube: Dmitrij Kollars im Interview
World-class player Fabiano Caruana was at a disadvantage and had to fight for a long time, but the draw against Pavel Eljanov held. He commented on the new rules after his first two games in the No Castling Chess format:
"It´s fun. All the games, alle the openings are very interesting. You get a fight immediately. I mean Kramnik´s game today for example was very chaotic, I didn´t know what is going on. You get some really fighting positions early on. So I like the concept," the world number 3 is looking forward to the coming games. Now he is half a point ahead of Kollars and Kramnik.
In the A-Open very combative chess was played: on the first three boards on the stage only Alexander Donchenko could win in the end. He gained an early advantage against Frederik Svane, and finally made use of his exchange up. Matthias Blübaum, on the other hand, had to survive a few moments and in the end can be very happy about a draw against Leon Mendonca. Mendonca had opportunities to win the game in the middlegame. The second player with 4 points from 4 games is Aryan Chopra, who won after 5.5 hours against Arthur Guo. Thus Donchenko and Chopra will meet on Wednesday at the top board of the A-Open.
In the Sportland NRW Cup, Ruben Gideon Köllner claimed the next victory. With 3.5 points from 4 games, the 19-year-old is now in the lead and is aiming for a standard for the title of Grandmaster in this tournament. The still 11-year-old Hussain Besou continues to play impressively: the probably greatest talent in Germany only just missed his second victory against a grandmaster and is well in the field with 2.5 points from 4 games. The most famous German-speaking chess-YouTuber "The Big Greek" Georgios Souleidis is currently in second place. TBG benefited from a mishap in the opening by Jana Schneider, for whom not much has come together in Dortmund so far.
Table Sportland NRW Cup:
1. Ruben Gideon Köllner 3.5
2. Georgios Souleidis 3
3. Dinara Wagner 3
4. Karthik Venkataraman
5. Hussain Besou