48 hours to Biel

by Macauley Peterson
7/20/2018 – Get set for one of the summer's biggest events and one with a long tradition. The Biel Chess Festival is LIVE with World Champion Magnus Carlsen leading the GM tournament. ChessBase brings you live commentary from Biel with GM Daniel King and IM Anna Rudolf.
Scarcely any world champion has managed to captivate chess lovers to the extent Carlsen has. The enormously talented Norwegian hasn't been systematically trained within the structures of a major chess-playing nation such as Russia, the Ukraine or China.

ACCENTUS Biel GM Tournament 2018

World Champion Magnus Carlsen makes his return to Biel, Switzerland for the first time as Champion. Carlsen's last Biel victory was in 2011, and his last visit was in 2012 when Wang Hao was the surprise winner.

Biel 2012 podium

Carlsen finished second to Wang Hao in 2012, with Hikaru Nakamura and Anish Giri joint third | Photo: Biel Chess Festival

The players list this year will include five-time winner Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Shakhriyar Mamedyarov, Peter Svidler, David Navara and the young Swiss GM Nico Georgiadis.

ChessBase will once again be providing the live commentary webcast hosted by GM Daniel King and this year joined by IM Anna Rudolf.

GM King's preview of Biel for his Power Play channel

Checkmate. That's the aim of the game. There are numerous ways to checkmate the enemy king, but there are common patterns that recur over and over again, and having these at our mental fingertips is essential for when we want to finish the game.

Format and Schedule

The format is a six-player double-round robin, so ten rounds in all played everyday beginning Sunday, July 22nd (except a free day on July 28th) at 14:00 CEST (8:00 AM EDT).

Round 1 - July 22, 14:00 CEST
Round 2 - July 23, 14:00
Round 3 - July 24, 14:00
Round 4 - July 25, 14:00
Round 5 - July 26, 14:00
Round 6 - July 27, 14:00
Round 7 - July 29, 14:00
Round 8 - July 30, 14:00
Round 9 - July 31, 14:00
Round 10 - August 1, 12:00

Note: The last round (Round 10) starts on August 1st, two hours earlier at Noon CEST (6:00 AM EDT).

Players receive 100 minutes for 40 moves, followed by 50 minutes for 20 moves, then 15 minutes to the end of the game, plus a 30-second increment starting from move one.

The venue is the Congress Centre of Biel.

You can't get more central than this!

Links

Macauley served as the Editor in Chief of ChessBase News from July 2017 to March 2020. He is the producer of The Full English Breakfast chess podcast, and was an Associate Producer of the 2016 feature documentary, Magnus.

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