The 14th Classic Chess World Champion, Russian Vladimir Kramnik, has won the 2006 Dortmunder Sparkassen Chess Meeting held July 29 to Aug. 6 in Dortmund, Germany. This tournament is no doubt one of the most important of the year, and Kramnik has won it seven times since 1995.

This time the victory was very much in extremis. After five rounds he had drawn five times, and several players were ahead of him in the qualification table. Then he met Jobava Baadur in round six, the game on which we comment today.

The game was spectacular and highly unusual at this level of competition. The champ needed only 15 moves to finish off the young Georgian. Kramnik laid out the bait in the 14th move, a brilliant trick in the Queen’s Indian opening, and Baadur took the tackle, resigning one move afterwards.

Kramnik’s position was clearly better, but we are not used to seeing Grand Masters of this caliber submitting so easily, and we have seen some GMs defending much more complicated positions than this one. Baadur was simply flummoxed. In the next round, the 7th, Kramnik met Hungarian Peter Leko and won again, gaining enough points to triumph in the tournament.

After a lengthy crisis and a lot of health problems, Kramnik seems to be recovering very well. His next meeting will be in November to play against the computer program Deep Fritz, and afterward he will face the other World Champion, Veselin Topalov. We will pay a lot of attention to Kramnik’s evolution before these two important championships.

Baadur, Jobava (ELO: 2651) ‑ Kramnik, Vladimir (2743) [E12‑ Queen’s Indian]

Sparkassen Chess Meeting, Dortmund, Aug. 5, 6th round