What a start in the Germany Grand Prix of the 49th Dortmund International Chess Days! After 90 moves and 5.5 hours the third game of the grandmaster tournament also ended with a White win for Pavel Eljanov.
First the top-seeded shooting star Bogdan-Daniel Deac (photo) won against the Czech number 1 David Navara. After Navara played the opening inaccurately, the young Romanian managed a commanding victory.
Last year, Luke McShane was unable to travel to Dortmund at short notice due to entry restrictions. This year it worked out and he started motivated with a white game against European Champion Matthias Blübaum. Against the Russian Defence, McShane got a nice advantage in the middlegame and was able to lead it to victory in the endgame.
He shows his game himself at the Press Corner with Press Officer Patrick Zelbel:
Last year's winner Pavel Eljanov won after almost six hours against the other German starter Rasmus Svane. Dmitrij Kollars, who provided entertaining live commentary for the two main commentators, was not playing on the first day.
Results:
McShane - Blübaum 1-0
Deac - Navara 1-0
Eljanov - Svane 1-0
Sportland NRW Cups also off to a fighting start
The Sportland NRW Cup started perfectly for the young Fidemeister Christoph Dahl, who won two nice games. He is a two-time German U18 runner-up and is pursuing the goal of achieving a standard for the title of "International Champion" in Dortmund. After his opening defeat, 11-year-old Sauat Nurgaliev was able to record his first victory against Leonardo Costa.
In the women's Sportland NRW Cup, several young participants are hunting for title norms. But the experienced women's grandmaster Zoya Schleining from the Ruhr area had the perfect start with 2 wins. In both round-robin tournaments, one game of the weekend will be played on a morning in the course of the week, so that the table will then take on more contours.
Sparkassen Open with first big surprises
Two rounds have already been played in the two open tournaments. The first big surprise in the Sparkassen Open A came in the second round on Sunday when Alexey Wagner (photo) beat the top seeded Grandmaster Erwin L'Ami. In the A-Open, 185 starters go into the day. After two rounds, some players are still perfectly on track with 2 points from 2 games, among them the co-favourites and Grandmasters Max Warmerdam and Dr. Florian Handke.
The Sparkassen Open B even attracted 234 participants to Dortmund. The players up to a rating of 1900 play here in the morning and thus have time to watch the grandmasters in the afternoon. 40 participants are still in the B-Open with 2 points from 2 games.
The tournament continues on Monday. Then Viswanathan Anand, Vladimir Kramnik, Michael Adams and Daniel Fridman will also play in the No Castling World Masters in the afternoon. The top game will certainly be the duel of the world champions. GM Artur Jussupow, WIM Fiona Steil-Antoni and GM Matthias Blübaum, who is not playing, will commentate live: Dortmund Chess Channel