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Kramnik beats Leko by a small margin
30 April 2007 9:00 AM
The last few days a rapid match of eight games was played between Peter Leko and Vladimir Kramnik, in the Hungarian town of Miskolc. Two years ago Leko had played 4-4 there against Adams and last year he beat with 4,5-3-5. This year the score board saw the same result in favour of Kramnik: 3,5-4,5.
The first game was nothing special. In the second game Leko probably missed a win (41.Qa8+ Kf7 42.Qa7+ Kf8 43.Re1 was very strong) and perhaps this influenced his play in the third game where he blundered (with 29…Rfe8). Kramnik didn’t profit immediately (32.Rc2 Qe1+ 33.Kg2 Qe6 34.Qb5 was the way) but after another mistake by Leko (33…Qd3) he grabbed the first full point. The world champion could immediately have scored 1-3 but in the fourth game he missed the win (that starts with 38…Bc3!). In game five Kramnik applied a nice, new idea in his favourite ending (18.Ke1) and he won in his typical style. Luckily for Leko he could play a role in the match, by tricking Kramnik in game six. In the penultimate game Leko easily levelled the position with Black when the position was soon drawn. The last game looks like Kramnik home preparation to me, where Leko couldn’t get an advantage with White. (The analytical notes are based upon the the analysis of the Hungarian GM Ferenc Berkes at Chessbase.)
The games:
Many good pictures can be found on the official website.
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Vanaf 4 mei begint Kramnik-Aronian match. De officiële website is: http://www.aroniankramnik2007.am/
Slightly disappointing, I expected a larger margin in faviur of Vlad.
Good but gutless match. The better player won though. It is sad we’ll probably never see again fiery matches like in the old days with Karov, Kasparov, Kotchnoi, Spassky, Fisher, etc.
I bet Kramnik-Aronian will be at least as fiery as your spelling of the players’ names!
Sorry about the mispelling. I meant of course Karpov, Kortchnoi, etc. I am not so sure about
a fiery match between Kramnik and Aronian.
No problem. And well, we probably really can’t compare these small rapid matches with the big Wch / candidates matches of the old kings. But let’s hope for some more typically unexpected, small, brilliant moves by Levon.
Without Breaking to much Sweat Kramnik won the match. It is clear that he i back in business and will be one tough nut to crack in Mexico.
It is very interesting, how quickly opinions change.
Back at the CORUS-tournament nearly everybody here on this forum supported Topalov; and Kramnik received a lot of bad stuff here…