The fourth tournament of the Sparkassen Chess Trophy 2023 started on Monday: Sebastian Junker, board member of Sparkasse Dortmund, made the symbolic first move at the board of Pavel Eljanov against Vladimir Kramnik. Eljanov won the last two grandmaster tournaments in Dortmund, Kramnik is the undisputed record holder with 10 victories.
Kramnik played creatively early on in the special tournament mode of Chess without Castling, bringing his h-pawn to h5 and knight and queen into attacking positions against the point f2.
He mercilessly exploited Eljanov's inaccuracies and got an early attack against the white king. He was thus the first to win his game on the stage in the Goldsaal of the Westfalenhallen Dortmund. "Above all, I'm happy to be healthy in Dortmund, I feel very well and I'm looking forward to the tournament," Kramnik said in an interview after the game, after he had to withdraw at short notice last year due to a covid infection.
Both players were guests of press spokesman Patrick Zelbel in the interview and gave exciting insights: Analysis
World No. 3 Fabiano Caruana also got off to the perfect start: after 5 hours he won against the German participant and last year's winner Dmitrij Kollars in the rook ending. The opening phase made an interesting but balanced impression. But in the middlegame Caruana showed his class and slowly but surely gathered advantages.
Wagner and Köllner lead Sportland NRW Cup
After her great start, Dinara Wagner met "The Big Greek" Souleidis in the third round. Souleidis equalised early with Black and the game ended in a draw. But Ruben Gideon Köllner, the 2021 winner, was able to catch up with Wagner with a beautiful attacking win. "The opening idea was not really mine, I got that from Dmitrij Kollars, with whom I train," he chatted after the game. Hussain Besou drew and remains on the heels of the two leaders with 2 out of 3.
Blübaum, Donchenko, Adams convince on stage
Matthias Blübaum and Alexander Donchenko won their games against strong opponents in endgames. Things went faster for Michael Adams, who outplayed his opponent beautifully out of the opening phase: Adams - Janzelj.
A total of 8 players are still without a point loss in the A-Open. One of them was Frederik Svane, who won against Valentin Buckels. Svane seems to be in top form after his last tournament win in Teplice. There will be top pairings among the 8 players on Tuesday.