Chess - The Scotsman 19/07/2012

BRITISH banks are making the news for all the wrong reasons, what with bailouts, huge bonuses, rate fixing, money laundering and “casino banking”. We can only gaze with envy at Germany, where the highly efficient, locally based, non-profit Sparkassen do what banks are supposed to do: safely channel our savings into productive investments.

Sparkassen also sponsors many community events, one being Germany’s only elite tournament, the annual Dortmund Sparkassen Chess Meeting, which this year celebrates 40 years of being sponsored by its local branch. Dortmund is invariably dominated by the Russian former world champion Vladimir Kramnik, who is going for a tenth title this year, and standing in his way are: Sergey Karjakin (Russia), Fabiano Caruana (Italy), Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukraine), Peter Leko (Hungary), Mateusz Bartel (Poland), and the German cannon fodder of Arkahij Naiditsch, Georg Meier, Daniel Fridman and Jan Gustafsson.

In round 2, Kramnik not only shocked his opponent, Jan Gustafsson, but also the whole chess world by playing the King’s Indian Defence – especially as he’s regarded as being one of the big King’s Indian killers of all time, who even forced Garry Kasparov to abandon it. But the script just got better, because Kramnik went on to turn in a modern day brilliancy, much in the style of David Bronstein.

White perhaps had better than what was played with 20 Rc7, but one silicon fantasy line runs: 20 ...Bd4 21 Re7 Nxa2! 22 Kf2 Nc3 23 Re8+ Kg7 24 d6 Nd5 25 d7 Bxe3+ 26 Kg3 Bxd7 27 Rxa8 Nf4 and Black is winning.

J Gustafsson - V Kramnik

41st Dortmund Sparkassen, (2)

King’s Indian Defence

1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 g6 3 Nc3 Bg7 4 e4 d6 5 Nf3 0–0 6 Be2 e5 7 Be3 c6 8 0–0 exd4 9 Nxd4 Re8 10 f3 d5 11 cxd5 Nxd5 12 Nxd5 cxd5 13 Rc1 a5 14 Qb3 a4 15 Qxd5 Qxd5 16 exd5 a3 17 b3 Nc6! 18 Nc2 Rxe3 19 Nxe3 Nb4 20 Rc4 Nxa2 21 Ra4 Rxa4 22 bxa4 Bd4 23 Kf2 Nb4 24 Rc1 a2 25 Rxc8+ Kg7 26 Rc1 Nxd5 27 Rd1 Nxe3 0–1