Russian chess grandmaster Kramnik sets Guinness world record

Russian chess grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik has set a Guinness world record for winning the Sparkassen Chess Meeting in Dortmund for the ninth time, Russian website NewsRu.com reports.

Kramnik won the 2009 Sparkassen Chess Meeting by beating Arkadij Naiditsch in the last round. The Russian, who clinched his 9th title in Dortmund, finished a full point ahead of Carlsen, Leko and Jakovenko.

The Sparkassen Chess Meeting took place July 2-12 in Dortmund, Germany. Carlsen, Jakovenko, Kramnik, Leko, Bacrot and Naiditsch played a double round-robin. The rate of play was 40 moves in 100 minutes + 50 minutes for 20 moves + 15 minutes to end the game with 30 seconds increment per move from the start.

What started as a dreary tournament eventually finished with three very entertaining rounds. In the last match Vladimir Kramnik beat 2005 winner Arkadij Naiditsch to finish a full point ahead of his rivals, as the Carlsen-Bacrot and Leko-Jakovenko matches both ended in draws.

Kramnik has shown excellent preparation at this tournament and in the last round showed innovative gamesmanship against Naiditsch. It was a slight improvement over Leko’s play of just two days ago which should technical prowess, although it did not pose too great a threat to Kramnik.

The former World Champion played another strong game, took the full point and showed that he was the strongest in Dortmund this year - again, for the 9th time.

Leko, last year's winner, was the only other player to finished undefeated. He did so in unspectacular fashion, in eight games that finished in a draw before move 30. He beat Bacrot but later could not manage anything better against Jakovenko.

Jakovenko recovered well from his first-round loss against Carlsen by scoring +1 in the last nine rounds and so finished second equal with Leko and Carlsen, who played a good, solid tournament with just one big mistake - the Qc7 move against Kramnik - and with two fine wins against the Berlin Wall.

Bacrot, who qualified as the winner of this year’s Aeroflot Open, finished on -2 despite showing some good chess. Naiditsch was the only player clearly off form.

Kramnik is the first player in the world to win one of the three super tournaments Corus, Linares or Dortmund nine times. Until now he had shared the record with Kasparov who won Linares eight times. Not a fair comparison, since Dortmund was a single round-robin for many years. Kramnik said afterwards, “The new goal in my chess career is to win Dortmund for the 10th time.”