44th Biel International Chess Festival under way

The 2011 Biel Chess Festival is taking place from July 16 to 29, in a number of groups: the Master Tournament (eleven rounds Swiss); the Main Tournament (nine rounds Swiss); a Rapid and a Blitz tournament; Chess960; Youth, Simultaneous, Chess Tennis, ChessBase training seminars. Of greatest interest is of course the Accentus Grandmaster Tournament with six very strong grandmasters playing a double round robin: Magnus Carlsen, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Alexei Shirov, Fabiano Caruana, Alexander Morozevich and Yannick Pelletier.

The participants: Caruana, Pelletier, Shirov, Carlsen, Morozevich, Vachier-Lagrave

The rate of play: 2 hours for 40 moves, then one hour for 20 and 15 min for the rest of the game, with 30 sec increment per move. The scoring system is three points for a win, one for a draw and zero for a loss. No draw offers are permitted before move 30.

The first game to end was Alexei Shirov vs Alexander Morozevich. The latter played the French Defence and never let White get too much. After 24 moves the game ended in a draw by repetition – which is exempt from the 30-move draw offer rule. Fabiano Caruana vs Maxime Vachier-Lagrave was, to the delight of the spectators, a full-blooded Najdorf, which after a tough struggle ended in a draw after 45 moves. Of course the most gripping encounter was Yannick Pelletier vs Magnus Carlsen, which wound down to an ending with queen and four pawns on both sides of the board for Black vs queen and three pawns on the kingside for White. The world's highest ranked player worked out a plan and executed it beautifully. The game ended with a Carlsen win in 88 moves.