The fifth round finally lived up to the fighting spirit demonstrated by the players until now, with decisive results in all. Kramnik outsmarted his opponent by locking his rook away for good, while Leko's attempts to force a win ended up backfiring, and blowing up in his face. The two leaders Ponomariov and Mamedyarov met, and the leader's mantle traded hands once more. Games and analysis.

From Thursday July 15 to Sunday, July 25, 2010 the 38th edition annual Sparkassen Chess-Meeting is taking place in Dortmund, Germany. It is a six-player round robin, in which each player has to play two games against each other, one with white and one with black pieces. Draw offers are not allowed – a game can only be declared a draw, by the arbiter, if there is no possible win for one side, or if a position is repeated three time. The winner of this tournament will be determined after ten rounds. Games start at 15:00h = 3 p.m. local time (CEST, = 17:00 Moscow, 14:00 p.m. London, 9:00 a.m. New York). All games will be broadcast by the official web site's "Live Games" page and on the Playchess.com server, with live audio commentary, in German, by Dennis Breder (July 15-18), Niclas Huschenbeth (19-21), Merijn van Delft (22, 24, 25) and Julian Zimmermann (July 23).

Proverbs and sayings about the similarities between life and chess abound, and today merely provided one more example. In a few previous rounds, several decisive positions promising ones and zeros on the scoreboard failed to finish the way they had started, and draws were their end result. In today’s round, except for Kramnik’s game against Naiditsch, the two other boards had seemed destined for a balanced result, yet life had other plans.

Vladimir Kramnik had white against Arkadij Naiditsch, and after spending three rounds with a minus as a result of his first round loss to Ponomariov, finally scored his first full point. He played a topical Open Catalan for 17 moves until he played a somewhat innocuous looking novelty. Arkadij went astray and ended up with an imprisoned rook that cost him the game.

After winning his first two games, then losing his fourth round game and tournament lead, one had to wonder how Ruslan Ponomariov (above) would respond. His game against the new leader Shakhriyar Mamedyarov was crucial. Ruslan managed to maintain a slight edge as White well into the middlegame, but seemed unable to take it any further, and after 30 moves, it seemed as if a draw would be the likely outcome. If this was not to the Ukrainian’s liking, it seemed even less so to the Azerbaijan GM, who declined an exchange of rooks which led him to a difficult position. He never got himself out of it, and Ponomariov squeezed and pushed until his inevitable king penetration left things clear. He leads once more with 3.5/5.

Photos: Georgios Souleidis

From chessbase.com