https://www.chess.com/news/view/mr-dortmund-starts-with-a-loss-again-3127
Ten titles is truly impressive, but Kramnik hasn't won in Dortmund
since 2011. In each edition since his last victory, he couldn't win his
first round game. In both 2014 and 2015 he started with a loss, to Georg
Meier and Arkadij Naiditsch respectively. This year it happened again.
On Saturday Vladimir Kramnik played in the style of
Mikhail Tal, including a dazzling sacrifice that wasn't not entirely
correct—because Kramnik made a miscalculation. Unlike most of Tal's
opponents, Vladimir Fedoseev found all the precise defensive moves and completely refuted the over-aggression.
Kramnik had started the game rather quietly in fact. Following IM
Jaime Santos, who pressed Vishy Anand in León last week, the 14th World
Champion played the Exchange variation against the Caro-Kann—a line that
a young Bobby Fischer used to play as well.
Fedoseev, who qualified for Dortmund as the winner of this year's Aeroflot Open, was
well prepared for this line. "I thoroughly analysed it this year with
my trainer Alexander Khalifman," he said afterward. That was both well
prepared and well played by the 22-year-old player from St. Petersburg.
