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• 03 / 17 / 2010

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Cuban Leinier Dominguez drew two matches this Monday to accumulate two points in the Melody Amber chess tournament in Nice, France, where four players share the top.

The atypical form of “blind chess” had been adverse in the two previous dates to the Cuban, but apparently he faced them better today and signed the armistice with the Ukrainian Ruslan Ponomariov in 31 moves of a Spanish Opening.

According to the event´s website, the result was repeated in the blitz match, where the two players drew after 47 moves of a Grunfeld defense with the Cuban playing with black pieces.

Now Leinier places tenth among the 12 particpantss, while Ponomariov accumulates 4 points and leads the event tied with three other Grand Masters.

The Ukrainian Vassily Ivanchuk, Norwegian Magnus Carlsen and Russian Vladimir Kramnik are the others with a similar figure, although they arrived there by different routes.

Ivanchuk, first by tiebreaker, won the blind and drew in the blitz one against Russian Sergey Karjakin, while Kramnik did the reverse against Azeri Vugar Gashimov.

Carlsen, defeated twice on the first day, retrieved the honor with great strides and beat twice Russian Peter Svidler, the only player with 2.5 points.
 
Defending champion, Armenia's Levon Aronian, won twice against Dutchman Jan Smeets and now has three points after an ineffective start.

The Israeli Boris Gelfand and Russian Alexander Grischuk agreed to draw on both confrontations and exhibit three units, one more than Karjakin and Gashimov.

Smeets is last with only 1.5.

Source: ACN