Biel Rd.10: statistics and Playchess analysis

by ChessBase
7/30/2011 – This wonderfully exciting tournament is over, and to wrap things up we bring you a final report with interesting statistics (did you count: there were more black wins than white). Also the remarkable postgame sessions on Playchess with the players, who explained to a world-wide audience what transpired in the games they had just finished. Great event, pity it's over.

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The 2011 Biel Chess Festival took 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 was of course the Accentus Grandmaster Tournament with six very strong grandmasters playing a double round robin: Magnus Carlsen, Maximee Vachier-Lagrave, Alexei Shirov, Fabiano Caruana, Alexander Morozevich and Yannick Pelletier.


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

The rate of play: two 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 was three points for a win, one for a draw and zero for a loss. No draw offers were permitted before move 30.


The winners: Alexander Morozevich, Magnus Carlsen, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave

The tournament winner was (once again) Norwegian GM Magnus Carlsen, who won five games and lost one ("plus four"), followed by Russian GM Alexander Morozevich with four wins and a loss (plus three), and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, who scored 50%, with two wins and two losses (both to Morozevich).

Final standings

Scoring system: a win counts as three points, a draw as one and a loss zero. In the traditional scoring system, which we assume will apply when calculating the ratings, the tournament table at halftime would look like this:

Note that the traditional method of scoring (1-½-0) produces exactly the same rankings, just different final scores.

Statistics

Let us look once again at the draw quotients, and compare them with last year's edition of the event:


Number of games
White wins
Draws
Black wins

2011
30
23.3%
50.0%
26.7%

2010
45
20.0%
68.9%
11.1%

It is interesting to see that more games were won with the black pieces than with white – eight vs seven to be precise. Carlsen and Caruana won two games each with black, Morozevich three. Caruana lost two games with white, Pelletier three. Carlsen won three games with white, Vachier-Lagrave two.

And if you look at the lengths of the games you also see a marked difference: in 2010 there were six games of less than 23 moves, and a total of 17 games of less than 30 moves (16 draws and one black win). This year with a third less games (thirty games as opposed to last year's 45) there was just one game with less than 23 moves (Vachier-Lagrave vs Shirov in the final round), and just four with less than 30 moves (including a win by Carlsen over Caruana in 27 moves). A real difference that needs to be studied.

Live ratings

Finally let us take a look at the current live ratings, as calculated by a site run by IM Artiom Tsepotan together with International Arbiter Dr. Christopher Wright. It was calculated on 29 July 2011, at 19:13 GMT, and included the Biel tournament as well as eight rounds of the Dortmund event. The ratings of the top twenty players in the world are as follows:

# Name
Rating
+/-
Games
FIDE
Age/birthday
1 Carlsen
2823.0
+2.0
10
20 (30.11.1990)
2 Anand
2817.0
0.0
0
41 (11.12.1969)
3 Aronian
2807.0
+2.0
8
28 (06.10.1982)
4 Kramnik
2799.1
+18.1
8
36 (25.06.1975)
5 Karjakin
2774.6
-13.4
6
21 (12.01.1990)
6 Topalov
2768.0
0.0
0
36 (15.03.1975)
7 Ivanchuk
2764.7
-3.3
15
42 (18.03.1969)
8 Ponomariov
2760.6
-3.4
8
27 (11.10.1983)
9 Gashimov
2756.4
-3.6
9
25 (24.07.1986)
10 Kamsky
2755.8
+14.8
18
37 (02.06.1974)
11 Grischuk
2755.3
+9.3
8
27 (31.10.1983)
12 Mamedyarov
2754.5
-10.5
9
26 (12.04.1985)
13 Radjabov
2751.8
+7.8
9
24 (12.03.1987)
14 Nakamura
2749.8
-20.2
8
23 (09.12.1987)
15 Gelfand
2746.0
0.0
0
43 (24.06.1968)
16 Wang, Hao
2739.2
+21.2
13
21 (04.08.1989)
17 Leko
2727.7
+10.7
9
31 (08.09.1979)
18 Svidler
2727.5
-11.5
7
35 (17.06.1976)
19 Vitiugov
2726.2
-6.8
17
24 (04.02.1987)
20 Moiseenko
2725.5
+10.5
8
31 (17.05.1980)

Magnus Carlsen's highest ever live rating, 2828.4 on Friday, July 22 (after round four of Biel), has settled at 2823, making him the second highest rated player of all time. Only Garry Kasparov surpasses Magnus' rating with his mystical 2851, achieved in the July 1999 and January 2000 FIDE ratings.


On top of the world: Norwegian GM Magnus Carlsen


Live GM commentary and interviews on Playchess

During the games of the Biel Chess Festival there was live commentary – by GM Miso Cebalo in German and GMs like Danny King, Jan Gustafsson or Jan Smeets in English. After the games were over the players came to the stage where Cebalo analysed the moves with them (in English). These were particularly interesting sessions, since the proponents had everything still fresh in their minds, and were in fact exploring, in real time, what had happened just minutes ago. All of this was available to a world-wide audience on Playchess and, with a normal Internet browser, on our special Chesslive broadcast page. In this report we show you the postgame interviews of the final round as video captures. At the end of the report you will find a PGN file to download and analyse yourself, assisted by your favourite chess engine.


Alexander Morozevich analysing on Playchess with Miso Cebalo


Fabiano Caruana analysing his final game in Biel 2011...


... together with Miso Cebalo and the tournament winner Magnus Carlsen

Our thanks for this splendid event and the productive cooperation go to...


Olivier Breisacher, press officer and director of the GM tournament...


... and Peter Burri, technical director of the event


Overview: schedule and results

Round 1: Monday, July 18, 14:00h
Fabiano Caruana 
½-½
 Maxime Vachier
Yannick Pelletier 
0-1
 Magnus Carlsen
Alexei Shirov 
½-½
 Alex. Morozevich 
Round 2: Tuesday, July 19, 14:00h
Maxime Vachier 
0-1
 Alex. Morozevich
Magnus Carlsen 
1-0
 Alexei Shirov
Yannick Pelletier 
½-½
 Fabiano Caruana
Round 3: Wednesday, July 20, 14:00h
Yannick Pelletier 
½-½
 Maxime Vachier
Alexei Shirov 
1-0
 Fabiano Caruana
Alex. Morozevich 
½-½
 Magnus Carlsen 
Round 4: Friday, July 22, 14:00h
Alexei Shirov 
½-½
 Maxime Vachier
Alex. Morozevich 
½-½
 Yannick Pelletier
Magnus Carlsen 
1-0
 Fabiano Caruana
Round 5: Saturday, July 23, 14:00h
Maxime Vachier 
1-0
 Magnus Carlsen 
Fabiano Caruana 
½-½
 Alex. Morozevich
Yannick Pelletier 
0-1
 Alexei Shirov
Round 6: Monday, July 25, 14:00h
Maxime Vachier 
½-½
 Fabiano Caruana
Magnus Carlsen 
1-0
 Yannick Pelletier
Alex. Morozevich 
½-½
 Alexei Shirov
Round 7: Tuesday, July 26, 14:00h
Alex. Morozevich 
1-0
 Maxime Vachier
Alexei Shirov 
0-1
 Magnus Carlsen 
Yannick Pelletier 
0-1
 Fabiano Caruana
Round 8: Wednesday, July 27, 14:00h
Maxime Vachier  
1-0
 Yannick Pelletier
Fabiano Caruana 
0-1
 Alexei Shirov
Magnus Carlsen 
½-½
 Alex. Morozevich
Round 9: Thursday, July 28, 14:00h
Magnus Carlsen 
½-½
 Maxime Vachier
Alex. Morozevich 
0-1
 Fabiano Caruana
Alexei Shirov 
½-½
 Yannick Pelletier
Round 10: Friday, July 29, 11:00h
Maxime Vachier 
½-½
 Alexei Shirov
Yannick Pelletier 
0-1
 Alex. Morozevich
Fabiano Caruana 
½-½
 Magnus Carlsen 

Links

The games are being 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 11 or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.

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