GM Tournament in memoriam Olivier Breisacher

The GM tournament this year is in memory of Olivier Breisacher, who for more than 15 years looked after the organisation, reporting and external communications around the grandmasters tournament in Biel. The tournament is a ten-round double round robin, played from July 22nd to August 1st, with games starting at 2 p.m. local time.

Round ten report

Summary of round ten by GM Daniel King

These video summaries represent a pioneer effort by GM Daniel King and Pascal Simon to give us a feel for what has happened in each round of the Biel GM tournament. They require just three to five minutes of your time and should not be missed. We thank our team for providing them just hours after the rounds end.

Play of the day

Biel 2013 Round 10 Play of the Day: Maxime Vachier-Lagrave vs Ding Liren

Replay all games of the round

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The critical game: French GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave vs GM Ding Liren from China

Even tail-ender Richard Raport is interested in the outcome of this game

Ding, the only player who could have won the title on his own steam
(by beating Vachier-Lagrave), faltered and joined the pack of four leaders

This man forced the four-player tiebreak: Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

Alexander Moiseenko and Etienne Bacrot drew, with both proceeding to the tiebreaks

Russian GM Ian Nepomniachtchi finised in fifth place ...

... while Hungarian youngster GM Richard Rapport was last

Photos by Pascal Simon for ChessBase

Final standings

In Biel the games are scored three points for a win, one for a draw and zero for a loss. According to this "soccer" system, which is official in this tournament, the standings are:

Here are the standing according to the traditional 2-1-0 scoring system:

Note that the three players with 5.5/10 in the traditional scoring caught Etienne Bacrot, who finished with 6.0/10 by virtue of having more decisive games. Bacrot won two and drew the rest, with no losses. Vachier-Lagrave, Ding Liren and Alexander Moiseenko had three wins and two losses each, which allowed them to catch Bacrot.

Tiebreaks

Since four players finished with the same amount of points after the last round, there will be semi-finals in blitz (two games with 5’+2’’; if 1-1, one Armageddon game). The semi-finals will be Player 1 vs Player 4 and Player 2 vs Player 3, with 1 and 2 having the priority to choose the colour. So the pairings are:

After this the two winners play in the final, which consists of two rapid games – 15 minutes for all moves, with a 10 second increment per move. If this ends 1-1, two blitz games with 5’+2” are played. If this too finishes 1-1, one Armageddon game will be played, with 5 minutes for White, who has to win, and 4 minutes for Black, who only needs to draw.

Video analysis with the players

Biel 2013 Round 10: Etienne Bacrot - Alexander Moiseenko

Biel 2013 Round 10: Ian Nepomniachtchi - Richard Rapport

Schedule and results

Links Official tournament site All games in PGN The games will be broadcast live on the official web site and on the chess server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase 12 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.