Ich Bein Ein Dortmunder!

The Sparkassen Chess-Meeting in Dortmund, one of Germany's top classical tournaments, looks set for something of a rarity of crowning a new champion this weekend!

The tournament is usually regarded as the fiefdom of Vladamir Kramnik of Russia, who has nine titles to his name. But the former world champion got off to a bad start last week by being held to a draw in the opening round to the young Vietnamese champion Le Quang Liem - and then he suffered a sensational loss in the next round at the hands of Ruslan Ponomariov of Ukraine.

Going into the final two rounds, Ponomariov looks to be secure at the top with a full point lead over his nearest rival, Le Quang Liem and Shak Mamedyarov of Azerbaijan - but he has to play both in the final rounds, so anything can happen in the weekend finale from Dortmund!

Former world champion and candidate for Fide president, Anatoly Karpov, dropped in on the tournament on Thursday while he was on the campaign stump in Germany...where he was immediately deployed to make the official first move to start the seventh round game between Kramnik and Ponomariov (picture above).

ICC will be relaying the final weekend games live, starting at 9:15am ET on Saturday, with the final round, on Sunday, starting at 7:00am ET. For each round so far, Chess.FM site pros GMs Joel Benjamin and Larry Christiansen have brought you the best in each day's action with their choice for Game of the Day (whatever you do, don't miss Joel Benjamin on Ponomariov-Kramnik!). Both US Chess Hall of Famers are indeed a hard act to follow, but this weekend, the final two rounds of GOTD will be provided by IM Mark Ginsburg.

GOTD is an ICC member-only service - but for non-ICC members, we provide for you below a free 5 minute preview of each of the videos. To watch in full, sign up today for your ICC membership by clicking here.

Official site: http://www.sparkassen-chess-meeting.de/2010/

Game of the Day video

Rd	Commentator	Game	Watch	Free preview
1	GM Joel Benjamin	GM Arkadij Naiditsch vs. GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov
2	GM Joel Benjamin	GM Ruslan Ponomariov vs. GM Vladimir Kramnik
3	GM Joel Benjamin	GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov vs. GM Le Quang Liem
4	GM Joel Benjamin	GM Le Quang Liem vs. GM Ruslan Ponomariov
5	GM Larry Christiansen	GM Vladimir Kramnik vs. GM Arkadij Naiditsch
6	GM Larry Christiansen	GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov vs. GM Arkadij Naiditsch
7	GM Larry Christiansen	GM Shakhriyar Mamedyarov vs. GM Peter Leko
8	GM Larry Christiansen	GM Ruslan Ponomariov vs. GM Arkadij Naiditsch
9	IM Mark Ginsburg
10	IM Mark Ginsburg

Standings after Round 8

N	Name	Title	FED	FIDE	1		2		3		4		5		6		PTS	TPR
1.	Ponomariov, Ruslan	g	UKR	2734	*	*	0	.	1	.	1	½	½	1	1	½	5½	2873
2.	Le Quang Liem	g	VIE	2681	1	.	*	*	0	½	½	½	½	½	1	.	4½	2785
3.	Mamedyarov, Shakhriyar	g	AZE	2761	0	.	1	½	*	*	½	.	1	0	½	1	4½	2758
4.	Kramnik, Vladimir	g	RUS	2790	0	½	½	½	½	.	*	*	1	.	½	½	4	2717
5.	Naiditsch, Arkadij	g	GER	2684	½	0	½	½	0	1	0	.	*	*	½	.	3	2647
6.	Leko, Peter	g	HUN	2734	0	½	0	.	½	0	½	½	½	.	*	*	2½	2600

Featuring Chess.FM

One of the great benefits of ICC (apart from all the top-notch online play and tournaments) in recent years has been the upgrade in our Chess.FM service - many members agree that the live Chess.FM commentary and GOTDs from our elite tournament coverage alone is worthy of their membership fee. Also we have six regular weekly shows, one of which below being GM Boris Alterman's Gambit Guide.

And for non-ICC members to tune-in to one of the most popular Chess.FM regular weekly shows, we have made Boris Alterman's latest show free for you to view to find out exactly what you are missing by not being a member of ICC!

In his weekly Gambit Guide series on ICC, Boris investigates gambits old and new and show that, while some may not be actively played on the grandmaster circuit these days, they are all exciting to play and at the same time instructive as they teach us all about natural development of the pieces and tactics in chess. GM Boris Alterman has an official blog where, among other things, he'll be discussing some of his choices for his Gambit Guide.

One of the first chess books to be published in Italy, at the height of the Renaissance, was written by the Portuguese master Pedro Damiano back in 1512. In it, he noted that after 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 the reply 2…Nc6 is good, 2…d6 is not so good, and 2…f6 (the opening named after him) is worst.

Many believed for years thereafter that the outright refutation of the Damiano to be 3 Nxe5. However, even today, the Damiano with 2…f6?! retains something of a cult underground following. Even Bobby Fischer played the recommended refutation of it during his legendary simultaneous tour of the US in 1964 and could only draw.

The shock value alone of playing the Damiano with 2…f6?! in online play has seen a lot of positive results for Black. And following many requests from ICC members on what to do against it, our resident gambit guru, GM Boris Alterman, overviews it in his latest Gambit Guide series for Chess.FM.

Damiano Gambit - Part 1:

FREE SHOW

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