Ruslan Ponomariov showed great form by also winning his second game in the Dortmund Sparkasse Chess-Meeting. He beat Vladimir Kramnik in just 36 moves. Peter Leko was close to victory against Mamedyarov.

Report by Daan Zult

It’s not Vladimir Kramnik’s tournament so far, even though the 14th World Champion managed to win the Dortmund tournament nine times already, including last year. In the second round of this year's edition however, Ruslan Ponomariov managed to beat him in spectacular fashion in a Bogo-Indian.

Ponomariov-Kramnik (photo by Georgios Souleidis)

Pono introduced the new move 12.Rc1, which was later followed by the crushing 16.Bxd5!

Vlad gave Pono an easy day when after 16...exd5 17.Nxd5 he played 17... Qd8? instead of the more tenacious 17... Bd8, and a move later 18... Rc8 instead of 18... gxf4, which was Kramnik’s last hope for survival. Pono kept his head cool and transformed his advantage into a winning pawn endgame. Another excellent game by Ponomariov.

The other games, Leko - Mamedyarov and Quang Le - Naiditsch where not uneventful, but ended in a draw nevertheless.

Mamedyarov gave Leko serious winning chances with 20... f5, but Leko faltered with 35.Rc7 where 35.Rf1! would have retained the advantage.

Hereby Leko missed an excellent opportunity to bounce back in the tournament after his loss against Pono the day before.

Peter Leko (photo by Georgios Souleidis)

Quang Le seemed to have developed a nice initiative against Naiditsch, but with some accurate play Naiditsch managed to keep the game within bounds of equality.

After two rounds, Quang Le is the only player with a 50% score, while Pono is leading the pack with 2 out of 2, closely followed by Mamedyarov with 1.5 points. Kramnik, Leko and Naiditsch share the end of the tail with half a point.

Quang Le-Naiditsch (photo by Georgios Souleidis)

Games start daily at 15.00 CET and can be followed live here.

Dortmund Games round 2

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Links

• Official website
• Games in PGN via TWIC