Kramnik wins 9th title in Dortmund

28 Responses to “Kramnik wins 9th title in Dortmund”

1. vosuram on July 12th, 2009 20:40
   

   Dear Peter, what can you say about last 3 games of Kramnik?
2. Cardinal on July 12th, 2009 22:19
   

   Kramnik’s back. I see him going to #1.
   Good chess…
3. GG on July 12th, 2009 22:45
   

   You forgot to mention in your report, that Kramnik secured himself a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. He is the first player in the world to win one of the three Super Tournaments (Linares, Wijk aan Zee, Dortmund) nine (!) times.
4. gg on July 12th, 2009 23:42
   

   “He is the first player in the world to win one of the three Super Tournaments (Linares, Wijk aan Zee, Dortmund) nine (!) times”

   If one doesn’t count some guy from Baku that won Linares nine times. He didn’t play in Dortmund but if he had done that it wouldn’t have been easy for Kramnik to get those nine wins since he only finished ahead of the beast in one single tournament in his whole career, Linares 2004.
5. GG on July 13th, 2009 01:25
   

   That Armenian guy won Linares 8 times, Mr. gg. And he is the greatest Champion of all Times. No doubts.
   But as for Kramnik’s Dortmund-record – that doesn’t change anything… i guess. Just figures.

   Anywayzzz, if you have an argument against it, you’d better address yourself to the official site of Dortmund Tournament – the source of that Guiness related stuff.
6. GG on July 13th, 2009 01:25
   

   Guinness*
7. Vlad on July 13th, 2009 03:55
   

   In classical tournaments Kramnik was ahead of GK 4 times:
   Horgen 1995, Dos Hermanas 1996, Linares 2003, Linares 2004.
8. Atila on July 13th, 2009 05:52
   

   Submitted on: Jul 13, 2009 @ 5:42
   You just can’t compared LINARES with dortmund…
9. gg on July 13th, 2009 07:54
   

   “That Armenian guy won Linares 8 times, Mr. gg”

   No, nine times:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linares_chess_tournament
10. Cardinal on July 13th, 2009 09:27
    

    Mr Garry Kasparov’s Azerbaijan. He’s won more chess tournaments than any individual in history, including about 10 oscars!
11. Thomas on July 13th, 2009 10:20
    

    Pointed out by acirce on Dailydirt: The confusion probably stems from Linares 2000. Kasparov and Kramnik tied for first, all tiebreaks were also equal, the official “tie-tiebreaker” would have been a coin throw (!). Rather than going for this solution or playing blitz games (apparently unheard of as tiebreaker at the time), Kasparov decided that Kramnik could have the trophy.
    So to remove any lingering doubts, Kramnik has to win Dortmund another time – “of course” he said that he plans doing so … .
12. percy on July 13th, 2009 10:30
    

    “Kasparov decided that Kramnik could have the trophy.
    So to remove any lingering doubts, Kramnik has to win Dortmund another time”

    It is surely more than lingering doubts Kasparov definitely won Linares year 2000 (together with Kramnik), as the official Linares site and all other official stats have said all the time, apart from the players themselves… Afterwards Kasparov gave the trophy to Kramnik, as he said he had so many of them already, but the Dortmund site is just wrong if they mean that Kasparov didn’t win Linares 2000 and I have never heard anyone else claim that he didn’t
13. anonymous on July 13th, 2009 11:21
    

    To see who was/is who in chess take a look here:
    http://cid-ea385817c877cd86.skydrive.live.com/play.aspx/chess%20history/Tournaments?ref=1

    The last decade should be added soon, or soo I have been told.

    For world championship see here:
    http://cid-c08b59ad49a5884d.skydrive.live.com/play.aspx/.Public/World%20Championship?ref=1
14. WGIFM on July 13th, 2009 11:24
    

    Kramnik had a smooth tournament. Congrats. The most disapointing player for me -this time- was L?©ko. The only reasonable explanation for his raw of draws, might be the fact, that he spares his preparations for the upcoming GP.
15. Thomas on July 13th, 2009 12:15
    

    @percy: Hmm, who could have predicted that Kasparov’s “generosity” at Linares 2000 might “haunt” him almost 10 years later – given that his relationship with Kramnik deteriorated later on?

    For some more fairly irrelevant nitpicking: A tournament victory might mean clear first [no questions asked] or first on tiebreak [at time ambiguous, different rules lead to different winners]. At Linares 2000, Kasparov was “not at all better than Kramnik” – hence from this angle, he has merely 8 or 8.5 victories in this tournament?

    It’s up to the Guinness Book of Records to decide, they have rules for everything. Another chess example: A simul record requires a certain winning percentage and opponents’ strength to become accepted. Noone could get into the book scoring 20% against 523 opponents (or whatever number is required) with an average rating of 1200 … .

    Cheers!
16. Jagdish Dube. on July 13th, 2009 12:31
    

    Dear Peter,
    Please throw some light on the rating changes of all the 6 Grandmasters.Rating Performance has been indicated & Hans Arild Runde has not updated.
    Rating Perfmnce.
    1 Kramnik,V 2759 +89
    2 Leko,P 2756 +20
    3 Carlsen,M 2772 +1
    4 Jakovenko,D 2760 +15
    5 Bacrot,E 2721 -42
    6 Naiditsch,A 2697 -90
17. Thomas on July 13th, 2009 13:23
    

    Submitted on: Jul 13, 2009 @ 13:23
    @Jagdish: I can try to answer (on Peter’s behalf!?). The live rating list was last updated Friday evening and includes the first eight rounds of Dortmund. Since then, Kramnik should have gained 4.1 points by beating Naiditsch (that’s what he got for his first victory against him), and Carlsen should have lost ~1 point by drawing the lowest-rated Naiditsch and Bacrot.
    So the current live top 5 should be:
    1 Topalov 2813
    2 Anand 2788
    3 Carlsen ~2773
    4 Kramnik 2771.6
    5 Aronian 2768
    (hardly any changes since Friday for Jakovenko, Leko and Bacrot, Naiditsch losing a few more points – below 2700 and out of the live list)
18. Jagdish Dube. on July 13th, 2009 18:02
    

    @Thomas to read regarding Guiness Records.
    Russian chess grandmaster Kramnik sets Guinness world record
    Published in MOSNEWS.COM today.
    Russian chess grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik has set a Guinness world record for winning the Sparkassen Chess Meeting in Dortmund for the ninth time, Russian website NewsRu.com reports.

    Kramnik won the 2009 Sparkassen Chess Meeting by beating Arkadij Naiditsch in the last round. The Russian, who clinched his 9th title in Dortmund, finished a full point ahead of Carlsen, Leko and Jakovenko.

    The Sparkassen Chess Meeting took place July 2-12 in Dortmund, Germany. Carlsen, Jakovenko, Kramnik, Leko, Bacrot and Naiditsch played a double round-robin. The rate of play was 40 moves in 100 minutes + 50 minutes for 20 moves + 15 minutes to end the game with 30 seconds increment per move from the start.

    What started as a dreary tournament eventually finished with three very entertaining rounds. In the last match Vladimir Kramnik beat 2005 winner Arkadij Naiditsch to finish a full point ahead of his rivals, as the Carlsen-Bacrot and Leko-Jakovenko matches both ended in draws.

    Kramnik has shown excellent preparation at this tournament and in the last round showed innovative gamesmanship against Naiditsch. It was a slight improvement over Leko’s play of just two days ago which should technical prowess, although it did not pose too great a threat to Kramnik.

    The former World Champion played another strong game, took the full point and showed that he was the strongest in Dortmund this year – again, for the 9th time.

    Leko, last year’s winner, was the only other player to finished undefeated. He did so in unspectacular fashion, in eight games that finished in a draw before move 30. He beat Bacrot but later could not manage anything better against Jakovenko.

    Jakovenko recovered well from his first-round loss against Carlsen by scoring +1 in the last nine rounds and so finished second equal with Leko and Carlsen, who played a good, solid tournament with just one big mistake – the Qc7 move against Kramnik – and with two fine wins against the Berlin Wall.

    Bacrot, who qualified as the winner of this year’s Aeroflot Open, finished on -2 despite showing some good chess. Naiditsch was the only player clearly off form.

    Kramnik is the first player in the world to win one of the three super tournaments Corus, Linares or Dortmund nine times. Until now he had shared the record with Kasparov who won Linares eight times. Not a fair comparison, since Dortmund was a single round-robin for many years. Kramnik said afterwards, “The new goal in my chess career is to win Dortmund for the 10th time.”
19. Peter Doggers on July 13th, 2009 18:45
    

    Thx. The link: http://mosnews.com/sports/2009/07/13/ruschessguiness/

    Btw this article looks damn close to copyright infringement to me.
20. Jagdish Dube. on July 13th, 2009 19:16
    

    Earlier Peter had mentioned that posting of links are modereted.Hence I did not mention the link but clearly typed “Published in MOSNEWS.COM today.” I feel the matter is clear.
21. acirce on July 13th, 2009 23:51
    

    Thomas, just some very slight nitpicking on my own part: I didn’t say the official “tie-tiebreaker” was a coin flip, and I don’t know if that was the case. In any event, it was initially turned down in favour of blitz, which didn’t happen either. You can read about it here, funny and interesting reading. http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/event/linares2000/linares10.html

    I think Kasparov later was to admit that letting Kramnik have the trophy was a psychological mistake in view of their match later that year.
22. acirce on July 13th, 2009 23:58
    

    Oh and I did also say I believed that they were both formally declared winners, a view indeed shared by the official site: http://www.ajedrezmorelialinares.com.mx/historia.htm (”El m?°ximo ganador en la historia del Linares y considerado actualmente como el mejor ajedrecista de todos los tiempos es el ruso Garry Kasp?°rov, coron?°ndose en nueve de sus 12 participaciones” – i.e. Kasparov participated 12 times and won 9 of them.)
23. Thomas on July 14th, 2009 10:22
    

    OK, so the (declined) coin throw was more improvisation by the arbiter than anything else – who would have predicted such a tournament table (two players at +2, four others at -1)?
    At one other occasion (candidates match Huebner-Smyslov) the issue had been decided by a roulette throw … seems ages ago that noone had heard of rapid, blitz and Armaggedon tiebreaks!
24. Thomas on July 14th, 2009 10:26
    

    BTW, Mig on Dailydirt has rather the opposite take on Bacrot and Naiditsch:
    “My impression was that Bacrot played worse than his -2 score while Naiditsch played better than his -4. The Frenchman successfully defended some inferior positions while the German had mental lapses after playing very well for most of several games.”
    It all depends on what is considered sign(s) of bad form, are blunders more telling than the overall play?
    Maybe Leko was also in bad form. But due to his reputation (opponents readily accepting short draws), he could limit the damage … and even win some rating points.
25. acirce on July 14th, 2009 17:21
    

    “who would have predicted such a tournament table (two players at +2, four others at -1)?”

    Heh, yes, but the 2001 table was probably even more curious: one player (guess who) at +5, the others at -1. http://www.chessbase.com/news/2005/linares/linares2001.gif
26. Castro on July 15th, 2009 07:13
    

    As a friend of mine once pointed, for same goals (e.g. candidates matches, or other elimination classic chess event) a coin throw after all classic games (and some posible tie breaks) makes a lot more sense than rapid or blitz games, to decide who goes ahead.
    That H?ºebner-Smyslov roulette throw is perfectly respectable, in my view.
    Ah, and I also think Kramnik has a small plus in super tournaments over Kasparov, as his 9 wins were unshared. And in match too, of course But in the overall competitive/mediatic picture, Kasparov had more importance.
    To the extent lots of people hallucinate even calling him “The best of all time”!
27. Jagdish Dube. on July 15th, 2009 07:23
    

    @ Thomas,anyway I got the answer,
    Latest live rating as per Hans Arild Runde in the link http://chess.liverating.org/ shows their changes as
    1.Kramnik 2772.4
    2 Leko 2759.0
    3 Carlsen 2772.4
    4 Jakovenko 2764.7
    5 Barcot 2714.8
    6 Naiditsch falls below 2700 club & lost about 10 Points(roughly).Not covered in Live rating list.
28. Martin Matthiesen on July 16th, 2009 22:12
    

    Kasparov played – and won – in Dortmund 1992. But Kramnik won anyway that year – he won the open!

    @ Cardinal: Karpov has won more grandmaster tournaments than any other modern master.

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