Drawish in Dortmund

Well, we had a few nice opening stunners in the first round of Dortmund, but all four games ceded to entropy by the end of the round. Vladimir Kramnik played the Grunfeld for the first time in his life in a serious game. (For a minute on ICC Chess.FM GM Nick de Firmian and I were wondering if they live games broadcast had accidentally swapped the names with the Ivanchuk-van Wely game.) Gustafsson didn't press the issue and they agreed a draw just a few moves beyond a game Kramnik played against Svidler with white last year. Was Kramnik hoping for a win with black against the lowest-rated player or was he just messing with Anand's head? If he trots out the Najdorf later in the event we'll know it's the latter. Nepomniachtchi played the wild Grischuk move 10..g5 against Naiditsch in the most interesting game of the round. As so often happens, however, they found a clever way to reach a forced repetition of position. Black could have avoided it with the very hairy 25..Qc1!? 26.Bb3 Qxb2 27.Qxb2 Bxb2 28.c5 risking mate to keep the piece. Even the computer doesn't come out of this with a plus for Black.

Mamedyarov-Leko barely got out of theory in a temporary pawn sac line of the Nimzo that Leko held confidently. Ivanchuk looked hard for a small plus in a heavy piece endgame against van Wely, but there wasn't anything to be found. He played a typical "why not?" Chucky move in the opening, putting the "wrong rook" on d1 and playing on the queenside. (While looking at related games in the database I found Zontakh-Savanovic, 1998. Not a great game, but the position after White's 24th move is classic stuff. Game below.)

Four draws. Not exactly a shocker when you swap players like Topalov, Carlsen, and Aronian for Kramnik, Leko, and Mamedyarov (who fluctuates between goofball openings and drawish conservatism). Playing for small advantages is a style thing and therefore a matter of preference, not quality. But there is no questioning the fact that it also produces fewer mistakes and therefore fewer decisive games. Only 10 games of 32 were decisive at Dortmund last year. And that with Alekseev, Carlsen, and Anand in the field and Kramnik scoring three wins. Maybe it's all the beer. Solely based on the large rating mismatches this year you'd expect more decisive games this time. In 2007 Naiditsch was the lowest-rated player by a wide margin at 2654. This year he's at 2624 with Nepomniachtchi ten points above him and Gustafsson 20 points below.

I got 2-to-1 odds from Nick taking Kramnik to win a share of first against the rest of the field. I probably should have pushed for 3-to-1 since Kramnik only has three whites this year. But +2 should do the trick this year for clear first.

Round 2: Kramnik-van Wely, Gustafsson-Naiditsch, Leko-Ivanchuk, Nepomniachtchi-Mamedyarov.