Dortmund 2005

Each year there are about 3 or 4 Super GM tournaments. This year, there were Corus, Linares, M-Tel, and now comes Dortmund. Starting July 8 and ending July 17, the tournament will consist of 9 rounds, Round Robin style. The following table lists the players in order of current FIDE rating.

Player	FIDE Rating	World Ranking
Veselin Topalov	2788	3 (tied for 2nd)
Peter Leko	2763	4
Vladimir Kramnik	2744	6
Peter Svidler	2738	7
Etienne Bacrot	2729	9
Michael Adams	2719	13
Emil Sutovsky	2674	28
Peter Heine Nielsen	2668	38
Loek van Wely	2655	48
Arkadij Naiditsch	2612	not in top 100

Eyes will no doubt be on Topalov, to see if he continues in his fine spectacular form that he has demonstrated in recent times. In the last round in Linares, he defeated Kasparov to share 1st place with him. As if that weren't enough, he went on to win the newly introduced M-Tel tournament, ahead of players like Anand, Kramnik, Adams and Judith Polgar. But he didn't just place first. He also did it with style, sacrificing pieces in a few games, something not commonly seen in games at this level. We can only hope that Topy will once again bring such flair and excitement to this tournament.

Classical World Champion Vladimir Kramnik has not been doing too well as of late. He defended his title late last year against the formidable Leko, drawing the match, thereby retaining the coveted title. However, his results since then have not been too impressive. In fact, after M-Tel, the nickname Drawnik does not really fit anymore, as he had a high rate of losses. He made some fantastic blunders, reminiscent of the time we watched Short drop his rook. His poor performance this year has been partly attributed to a physical illness he has not fully recovered from, which started sometime during his match with Leko. If Kramnik has managed to recover both physically and psychologically, then we could see some very good chess from him, though probably on the boring side.

Leko is very solid, and has achieved great results in the past ten months. After coming very close to snatching the title of World Champion from Kramnik, he went on to win Corus earlier this year, while defeating Anand in the process. Clearly Leko is capable of winning this event, but considering the field he will be facing, it will take a tremendous effort.

Adams came close to winning the FIDE World Championship last year. However, he has not been impressive in more recent times. Actually, he might still be suffering from some of the unpleasant feeling he had in just a couple weeks back, when he was thoroughly trounced in the man-machine match, by the computer Hydra, with a score of 0.5:5.5! Nevertheless, he is certainly no underdog and can be an obstacle for anyone.

Svidler is the Russian Champ. But I can't really recall anything to get excited about from his recent showings. He did gain some rating points in the last FIDE rating list, so maybe he will surprise some of us.

Unlike the other Super GM tournaments for this year, Dortmund will not have live internet transmission of the games. This is very sad. Nevertheless, one can get updates from the official site: Dortmund 2005
See also Chessbase Dortmund Report