Dortmund 2018, 7: A deserved winner

Ian Nepomniachtchi crashed through against Georg Meier to win the 2018 Sparkassen Chess Meeting in Dortmund by a full point. It was a thriller of a last round, with the four other players in contention for first place all fighting hard for the wins they needed to have a chance. Anish Giri achieved a huge advantage against Jan-Krzysztof Duda’s Pirc only to bungle the attack, while Vladislav Kovalev almost made it three losses in a row for Vladimir Kramnik before their game ended in bare kings on move 104.

Nepomniachtchi 1-0 Meier: A deserved winner

For the first time since 2011 a Russian player has won the Dortmund tournament, and for the first time since 1993 (Anatoly Karpov) that Russian player isn’t called Vladimir Kramnik. Ian Nepomniachtchi went into the final round with a half-point lead, but knowing that there was a good chance he had to win, since if he was only tied for first he was likely to lose out on the first tiebreak of the number of games with Black. He’d been given the luxury of playing four of the seven games with the white pieces, and he made good use of it, beating Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu and Kramnik before facing Georg Meier in the final game.