50th Biel: Round 4 and four winners

50th Biel International Festival

Round 4

After yesterday's game, Peter Leko and Yifan Hou made their first visit to Daniel King's mobile ChessBase studio, where the Chinese showed how she held the black side of a Petroff Defense without much trouble. Perhaps Ruslan Ponomariov caught the replay and was sufficiently impressed by her evident preparation not to test her in the same opening. Or, perhaps instead the former FIDE World Champion wasn't in the mood for a staid Petroff anyway. In any case, he confronted Hou with the more offbeat 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nf6 3.d3, which soon transposed into the venerable Vienna Game. The pair followed a recent predecessor albeit a blitz game...a high-powered blitz game, no less than Kasparov-Caruana from last year's "Ultimate Blitz" in St. Louis, only deviating on move 8 into virgin territory. After an early queen trade, there emerged double-rook endgame with a pair of knight, given a bit of character by the wrecked pawn structure for both sides. Pono managed to give Hou double-isolated f-pawns, but not to be outdone, was sadled himself by triple-isos on the c-file. After further trades into a rook ending, the Ukrainian made the surprising decision to transition to a pure king and pawn ending at the cost of a pawn, but correctly evaluated that there was no way for Hou to make progress.

Noel Studer took on Harikrishna with one of his own weapons, the classical French Defense. Harikrishna, in one of the main lines played 9.Nd1 followed by 10.c3 a modern way to stabilize the white pawn center and then followed a game played against Studer by IM Sean Winshand Cuhendi at the Zalakaros Open earlier this year.

Pentala Harikrishna | Photo: Pascal Simon

With 13...Qxa6 instead of 13...Rxa6, the Swiss deviated first. It may have made little difference, for Harikrishna had prepared a very energetic plan, initiated by the pawn thrust f4-f5, which gave him a strong initiative:

The Classical French - Main Line

After 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e5 Nfd7 5. f4 c5 6. Nf3 Nc6 7. Be3, the author takes a detailed look at a daring line with 7... cxd4 8. Nd4 Qb6, as well as the quieter plans with 7...cxd4 8. Nd4 Bc5, and the main line with 7... a6 and b5.

Etienne Bacrot fought Alexander Morozevich's Sicilian Defense with the Moscow variation (2...d6 3.Bb5), after which a few moves later a position with a typical Maroczy structure arose. With e7-e6 and d6-d5, the Russian Grandmaster tried to free his position, but soon his king got into hot water, with White's knights running rampant on the kingside.

In the game between David Navara and Peter Leko the viewers saw the Ragozin variation of the Queen's Gambit Declined. The Czech last had this line at the 2016 Corus Tournament against Wesley So. With 9.Rc1 instead of 9.Be2, Navara took a different path against Leko and after the opening built up a comfortable edge thanks to his strong pawn center. Here, too, it was a pair of white knights, wrecking havoc in Black's position.

David Navara | Photo: Pascal Simon

Rafael Vaganjan had no interest at all in a theory duel and chose the Torre Attack against Nico Georgiadis with 1.d4 2.Nf3 and 3.Bg5 against Black Fianchetto king position. The Swiss, however, soon achieved a very comfortable game against the ambitious white opening and was finally the boss in the ring. The decisive difference was made by Black's passed a-pawn which scored a touchdown, costing White the game.

Games and Commentary:

Round 4 - Part 1

Round 4 - Part 2

Live commentary by Daniel King, Joe Gallagher and guests from 14:15 CEST

Results of Round 4

All games round 1 to 4

Standings after four rounds